Why is that penny is the stream? Saturday, August 2, 2008

Ever see a water penny?  It is an aquatic larva of a beetle whose name comes from the fact that it is copper colored and has a round body like a very small penny.  They are only about 1/4″.  Finding one in a stream is great because this macroinvertebrate is pollution intolerant.  To find it, we had to do the water shuffle to dislodge it from a rock where it grazes on algae, doing its ecological thing.  It took a magnifying glass to see the six legs under the round body. CAMN  Stream team will meet at the Little Maumelle River at PMSP on Sept 13 and I know what I am going to be looking for.