Subject field
Ecology
Timing
15 to 60 ECTS
The project can take place anytime but chances for finding caddisfly for experiments are best in late spring and summer.
Background and aim
Caddisfly are insects which spend their larval life stages in water. They are known as ‘underwater architects’ because of the structures they build, including cases of stones and organic material. We have been finding many caddisfly larvae using seeds of riparian vegetation in their cases, but this has never been documented, and it is unknown why caddisfly would choose to use seeds or what the consequences are for seed dispersal or propagule survival. Therefore, this project will investigate seed use by case building caddisfly. You will work with data collected from a small UK stream. Pit fall traps were buried in the stream to catch caddisfly crawling along the stream bed and seeds in cases have been photographed and counted. You will identify the seeds from photographs and analyse the data to understand how many caddisflies use seeds of which species. We hope there will also be the opportunity to conduct aquarium experiments with caddisfly larvae, giving them a choice of seed species and other particles. The results will be an insight into the behaviour of these insects and help to understand how small insects can modify their environments at large scales.
Supervision
The project will be co-supervised by Judith Sarneel, who works with riparian plants and seed dispersal and Rich Mason who did his PhD on caddisfly larvae case design.
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