Internships

Melecia Wright ’11

We constructed 72 artificial substrates using recycled green mesh, crushed brick, gravel and shredded plastic. These were then deposited in the Hamilton reservoir- suspended from a floatline. We collected a dozen of these every week and noted the types and numbers of macroinvertebrates that had colonized them since their initial deposition. At the end of 6 weeks were able to guess which artificial substrate was best suited for assessing each macroinvertebrate. We could also use the information garnered from doing this experiment to test the impact of water pollutants on the aquatic biodiversity of the reservoir.