The following is a cautionary tale told by Ivan Monagan and written by Sharon Ashworth
Ivan Monagan had a few field seasons under his belt prior to attending the University of Michigan for his master's degree. As an undergraduate, he spent Arizona summers studying Mexican garter snakes and bunchgrass lizards, and had gone abroad to Thailand to study conservation biology and agriculture - so working outside under a variety of conditions was nothing new. Summering with lizards in Arizona however, is different than summering with the spineless on the shores of Lake Michigan.
During his first year at Michigan, Ivan enrolled in an entomology class that took students on a sampling trip to Sturgeon Bay at the northern tip of Michigan. He was hooked. The setting was beautiful – a crystal blue lake, a white sandy beach, and lovely little ponds and wetlands tucked in amongst the sand dunes. Ivan was taken with the beauty of the place, but also intrigued by the ecological questions presented by this unique ecosystem of interdunal wetlands.
Sturgeon Bay hosts a series of coastal dunes formed by glaciers leaving sandy deposits as they melted, or by river waters dropping sediment as they reach the lakeshore. As historic lake levels dropped, the newly exposed shoreline was sculpted into dunes by wind and waves, leaving successive rings of sand like three-dimensional bathtub rings as the water receded further and further. Consequently, the oldest dunes are further inland and forested, while the younger dunes closer to the lake are sparsely vegetated. In between the dunes are interdunal swales, small ponds or pools maintained by groundwater or temporarily filled with receding lake water.
The dunes and wetlands provide excellent opportunities to investigate how ecosystems change over time – a process called succession – and much of the research focuses on the vegetation of differently aged dune systems. Comparatively fewer studies explore the macroinvertebrate community – the insects, worms, snails, and crustaceans you can see without a microscope. Ivan soon found out why.
The entomology class had visited and sampled the younger dunes, those closest to the shore. Here dragonflies buzzed the clear shallow water, water beetles swam amongst sparse clumps of rushes and sweet gale, shorebirds waded the edges, and a breeze from the lake made for a most pleasant field site. Ivan thought to study changes in the macroinvertebrate community, sampling the youngest swales to the oldest. Of course the mosquitoes were worse in the older swales towards the woods he was told, nothing he couldn’t handle. So Ivan signed on to an excellent, intellectually challenging investigation in a beautiful spot, what more could a graduate student want?
The mosquito population was not the only difference between the younger and older swales. The older wetlands were forested, deeper, contained more submerged vegetation and woody shrubs, and in addition to hordes of mosquitos hosted leeches and biting flies. Ivan’s mistake was that in soliciting volunteer field assistants he mentioned these facts and consequently there were no naïve field hands to be had that summer. So on what would have been a normal sampling day, Ivan packed up his equipment and walked the twenty minutes into his study site from the nearest road. Arriving at one of the older swales he donned his chest waders, grabbed his sampling kit, but not his phone, and waded in.
After some time Ivan found himself in water above his waist in an area where submerged plants and woody branches made it difficult to walk. After managing not to trip, Ivan stepped in a deep hole and got stuck. With no one to help, and no phone, Ivan watched leech-filled water pour over his waders, anchoring him to the bottom of the swale. Scared of drowning and fretting about leeches the next threat sounded loudly as thunder rumbled and shook the swale. The sky blackened and the rain began. What happened next is unclear. Afraid of dying among the leeches, it was a crack of too close for comfort lighting that propelled Ivan out of the swale. Managing somehow to haul himself and his waterlogged, leech-filled waders out, Ivan dropped his equipment and ran.
Fortunately for Ivan, and for us, he now has a priceless cautionary tale to tell and a really fascinating ecological story to relate about aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity along a successional gradient in the interdunal swales of Sturgeon Bay. Ivan moved on to study lizard's in the coffee plantations of Southern Mexico – and on to many more field ecology adventures as well.
Ivan Monagan had a few field seasons under his belt prior to attending the University of Michigan for his master's degree. As an undergraduate, he spent Arizona summers studying Mexican garter snakes and bunchgrass lizards, and had gone abroad to Thailand to study conservation biology and agriculture - so working outside under a variety of conditions was nothing new. Summering with lizards in Arizona however, is different than summering with the spineless on the shores of Lake Michigan.
During his first year at Michigan, Ivan enrolled in an entomology class that took students on a sampling trip to Sturgeon Bay at the northern tip of Michigan. He was hooked. The setting was beautiful – a crystal blue lake, a white sandy beach, and lovely little ponds and wetlands tucked in amongst the sand dunes. Ivan was taken with the beauty of the place, but also intrigued by the ecological questions presented by this unique ecosystem of interdunal wetlands.
Sturgeon Bay hosts a series of coastal dunes formed by glaciers leaving sandy deposits as they melted, or by river waters dropping sediment as they reach the lakeshore. As historic lake levels dropped, the newly exposed shoreline was sculpted into dunes by wind and waves, leaving successive rings of sand like three-dimensional bathtub rings as the water receded further and further. Consequently, the oldest dunes are further inland and forested, while the younger dunes closer to the lake are sparsely vegetated. In between the dunes are interdunal swales, small ponds or pools maintained by groundwater or temporarily filled with receding lake water.
The dunes and wetlands provide excellent opportunities to investigate how ecosystems change over time – a process called succession – and much of the research focuses on the vegetation of differently aged dune systems. Comparatively fewer studies explore the macroinvertebrate community – the insects, worms, snails, and crustaceans you can see without a microscope. Ivan soon found out why.
The entomology class had visited and sampled the younger dunes, those closest to the shore. Here dragonflies buzzed the clear shallow water, water beetles swam amongst sparse clumps of rushes and sweet gale, shorebirds waded the edges, and a breeze from the lake made for a most pleasant field site. Ivan thought to study changes in the macroinvertebrate community, sampling the youngest swales to the oldest. Of course the mosquitoes were worse in the older swales towards the woods he was told, nothing he couldn’t handle. So Ivan signed on to an excellent, intellectually challenging investigation in a beautiful spot, what more could a graduate student want?
The mosquito population was not the only difference between the younger and older swales. The older wetlands were forested, deeper, contained more submerged vegetation and woody shrubs, and in addition to hordes of mosquitos hosted leeches and biting flies. Ivan’s mistake was that in soliciting volunteer field assistants he mentioned these facts and consequently there were no naïve field hands to be had that summer. So on what would have been a normal sampling day, Ivan packed up his equipment and walked the twenty minutes into his study site from the nearest road. Arriving at one of the older swales he donned his chest waders, grabbed his sampling kit, but not his phone, and waded in.
After some time Ivan found himself in water above his waist in an area where submerged plants and woody branches made it difficult to walk. After managing not to trip, Ivan stepped in a deep hole and got stuck. With no one to help, and no phone, Ivan watched leech-filled water pour over his waders, anchoring him to the bottom of the swale. Scared of drowning and fretting about leeches the next threat sounded loudly as thunder rumbled and shook the swale. The sky blackened and the rain began. What happened next is unclear. Afraid of dying among the leeches, it was a crack of too close for comfort lighting that propelled Ivan out of the swale. Managing somehow to haul himself and his waterlogged, leech-filled waders out, Ivan dropped his equipment and ran.
Fortunately for Ivan, and for us, he now has a priceless cautionary tale to tell and a really fascinating ecological story to relate about aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity along a successional gradient in the interdunal swales of Sturgeon Bay. Ivan moved on to study lizard's in the coffee plantations of Southern Mexico – and on to many more field ecology adventures as well.