Salmonfly monitoring
The use of collecting, sorting, and identifying benthic macroinvertebrates (BMI) in the Animas River has been a critical tool that Mountain Studies Institute has used to report and communicate water quality across the Animas River watershed.
BMI’s are commonly used as biological indicators of waterways because of simple collection methods, diverse tolerance levels to pollution, and their multi-year life spans in the river.
One species that is monitored in these assessments is the Giant Salmonfly (Pteronarcys californica) which is a species shown to be sensitive to habitat changes. This species of BMI is not only valuable for its presence in our river systems but offers another level of monitoring due to the shedding of its outer skin called exuvia, once it reaches adulthood.
why do we monitor exuvia?
The benefits of finding the salmonfly exuvia enables MSI to know that there is presence of this pollution-sensitive species even if their low population density is difficult to detect during in-stream monitoring.
Have you seen me?
Salmonfly exuvia found on willow stem
Citizen Science Monitoring
MSI has partnered with the City of Durango to design a citizen science monitoring project enabling community members to assist with finding Salmonlfy exuvia with the goals of comparing in-stream populations to hatched populations. Not only does this contribute to greater water quality data, but allows the community to develop a deeper connection to their local watershed.
Salmonfly monitoring sites
The Salmonfly exuvia hatch typically occurs for a 5-9 day period anytime between May-June, usually during high flow, and can be found along the Animas River banks on blades of grass, rocks, trees, or willow stems.
MSI has five different monitoring locations along the Animas River, spanning from James Ranch down to Dallabetta Park.
The most challenging part of this project is catching the hatch on time. If you have seen a Salmonfly exuvia at any point during this time period please call (970)-387-5161 to notify us the hatch has begun.
If you would like to volunteer to participate in monitoring our Salmonfly exuvia, please contact Jewell Coleman at jewell@mountainstudies.org
