Field season 2012 kickoff!

Wow - today was absolutely gorgeous weather for field sampling! I was out with three students from Husson (Alex, Hanna, and Dylan) at the Kenduskeag-Robyville site with Dr. Page's high school biology class. We had one of the best sample sets ever at that site, with loads of large dragonfly larvae, nice meaty stoneflies, and large damselflies (both broad-winged and narrow-winged), as well as plenty of crayfish, a common species we find at that site. The water was warm and shallow today, compared to other years.

The day started with a great find: a HUGE (at least 25 mm - I didn't get the final measurement) Hagenius brevistylus dragonfly larva. This species - one of the only ones that's really easy to identify right to the species level because it's so obvious - falls into the family Gomphidae. They look like this:

This had t be the biggest one I've ever seen in our nets! The class also caught several really neat looking dragonfly larvae from the family Macromiidae (I'm not sure this is exactly what ours looked like - maybe another species - but a general photo is here: )  which we don't seem to find in too many sites. With their extremely long, spidery legs, they are elegant and so different looking from many other families. We also found several of my own favorites - the family Aeshnidae, the really voracious predators who gladly display their excellent jet propulsion system in the sample buckets!

Looking forward to more sampling in the next few weeks!