Week 2: Finding Chironomids

            This week, I jumped into the project by beginning to sort through samples from the Columbia River for Chironomids. It took a day to get comfortable with sorting through all the detritus and other zooplankton to find the Chironomids, but I am now pretty good at finding Chironomids. The number of Chironomids found at each site varied a great deal. In the May Welch Island sample, I found 11 Chironomids. In the May Campbell Slough sample, I found about 30. In the Whites Island sample, I found a whopping 82 Chironomids! Very exciting.  

          Additionally, this Wednesday (June 18, 2014), Claudia and I went out to Beaver to collect more water samples for nutrient levels of the Columbia River. Once again, although these samplings will not figure prominently into my specifc project, it was a blast, and I am getting a taste of what field research might be like. 

           By the end of the week, I began to move forward with my project examining Chironomid gut contents. I hope to do a DNA extraction from the Chironomids next week, but I first need to wash all of my Chironomids to make sure they aren’t covered in diatoms (phytoplankton) before we do the DNA extraction. Because I am washing them, we can be sure that any detected phytoplankton were in the Chironomid guts and not the environment. I am also taking pictures of the washed Chironomids as recorded proof that they are diatom free on the outside.