The Ides of Marsh

I took my AP Environmental Science class to the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh today to look at the biodiversity of macroinvertebrates in the 100+ year-old man-made lake and the 15 year-old beaver ponds. The kids had a great time and got really into finding the bugs. My initial observation of their results are that we found a greater number of individual organisms in the lake, but a greater species richness in the beaver ponds. Science nerds are free to speculate on the reasons for this difference. It was definitely a worthwhile trip and a well-organized program put on by Dr. Dennis Gemmell at Rider University. We got lucky with a really beautiful day, too.