Lux Arbor Adventure

On May 20^th our class ventured to the beautiful Lux Arbor in order to study how Pumpkinseed sunfish can influence community composition and snail size distributions as well as snail behavior.  We were focused on 5 ponds in particular, two of which are known to have fish predators and the other three contained no fish. Our instructors, Idelle and Jorge, had recently placed pvc pipes in each of these ponds/lakes with the hope that the snails would colonize the pvc pipes and we would be able to collect data on their genus, size, habitat, thickness and behavior.

Unfortunately, the pvc pipes didn’t really work out. Watch this video to see us discovering our misfortune.

Idelle couldn’t have said it better, “BUMMER!”  But these things happen in field work and Idelle was quick to come up with a solution to our dilemma. Instead of collecting snails directly from the pipes she suggested we use nets to dig up muck and sort through it to find the snails by hand. So that's what we did. Some of us had more fun with it than others, but I think Casey was particularly enthused in her waders ;)

Our new method was successful and we were able to collect about 5-20 snails at each of the five ponds… Not exactly what we had hoped for, but we were able to get some pretty good data from what we found. Some I found particularly interesting... Average size didn't seem to differ much when comparing between ponds with and ponds without fish, but one of the ponds (pond #8) on average had much larger snails than the other four. It would be interesting to do further research on why that may be.
Additionally, comparing the thickness data, that we were able to collect by measuring the amount of weight it took to smash the snails, it seems that the two ponds containing fish were overall thicker than the snails collected from those containing no fish. This could be because selection is greater for thicker shells in lakes with sunfish, but we would certainly need more samples and data to confirm this belief.


Overall, it was a great exercise and a fantastic alternative to spending the day cooped up in a classroom.   We learned a lot about methodology and the ups and downs of field work, that you can't pick up from reading a book or being lectured. I look forward to our next ecological adventure!

-Lindsay Sutherland