This week with Dave we started another project on invasive aquatic life, New Zealand Mud Snails. They have been found in the Columbia River. Dave wants to research the mouths of the Rivers that run into the Columbia River. The Yakima, Umatilla, and Walla Walla River mouths we looked at. These snails are very small. They can be the size of a pencil tip and as big as a pencil eraser. We searched for these snails by picking up rocks and looking underneath them as well as pulling up aquatic plants to look at. At first it was hard to see them but once you found one you acquired the eye for it. We only found possible New Zealand Mud Snails at Bateman’s Island (mouth of the Yakima). These samples will be sent to a lab for identification.
I continued to search research papers on the Web of Science about the Rusty Crayfish, as well as starting a search on the New Zealand Mud Snails. With these papers found I created a word document and organized them by topic for reference at later use. This project was interesting since I got to understand other research that has been completed on these invasive species.
Later in the week I finally finished measuring the crayfish from week two then began pinning more bees. I continued to help pin bees from Boardman. One site I pinned had over 400 bees! That took me a couple days to complete pinning. Lauren taught us how to clean the pitfalls we have collected at Boardman. With this we are sorting through the contents for invertebrate predators, spiders and wind scorpions. For this task we use a sieve to clean most of the dirt out of the samples then place the contents in a swallow dish with water. From there we search through to collect the spiders and wind scorpions. Once found we place them in vials with alcohol to preserve them.
