Today's Voices of Conservation Science
Today's Voices of Conservation Science
Michael MacDonald—Caddisflies as Stream Engineers
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Michael MacDonald, a graduate student at Montana State University in the Department of Ecology, discusses his wonderful path to graduate school. He also discusses his research on how caddisflies alter substrate stability and nutrient cycling.
Hey, welcome to the podcast today's Voices of Conservation Science. And I'm Chris Guy. I'm your host for today's podcast. And this podcast focuses on people doing science that's then used to conserve natural resources. This podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Today I'm here with Mike McDonald, and he is a graduate student at Montana State University in the Department of Ecology. Mike, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_00I'm doing great. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01Not too bad. It's uh it's trying to warm up here in Bozeman. Um, but I guess tomorrow it's supposed to be above freezing, which would be nice. I don't think we've seen that in quite a while.
SPEAKER_00I know we'll have people walking around in t-shirts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um so tell us a little bit uh about yourself.
SPEAKER_00So I I grew up in eastern Massachusetts, just a little bit south of Boston. Um I actually pursued an undergraduate career, uh, undergraduate degree there in Boston at Northeastern University. Um I studied criminal justice, which there's a good degree to keep you out of trouble. It was, it was. I was for for a while I thought I wanted to be in in federal law enforcement, but I I quickly realized maybe two years into that degree, I realized that that was just not for me. So I figured I should at least finish up because I had gotten pretty deep into it. Um, and then I I moved on with my life. So I moved out west to Wyoming in 2008. And I wish I could tell you that that was to to pursue some career in ecology, but it really wasn't. I was looking to ski for the most part.
SPEAKER_01Um you're not alone in that.
SPEAKER_00Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And so you came out here to to Wyoming and um to to ski. And so what why why'd you pick Wyoming?
SPEAKER_00Wyoming, that was you know, really it was just it was just looking at the pictures of the beautiful mountains and the beautiful rivers and saying, hey, that's that's a place I could probably live for a year. That was the original plan. I'll just go out and be a ski bum for a year, maybe fish for a summer, try to figure out this fly fishing thing that everyone does. And then that year quickly turned into two and three, and eventually eight in Wyoming, and just fell in love with the West and everything it has to offer.
SPEAKER_01So did you did the all that time in Wyoming, did you just you spent skiing or did you do something else?
SPEAKER_00It was initially skiing, that was all that was on my mind, but of course the seasons turn, as we know, and then it became this I kind of had this infatuation with rivers and just exploring Snake River down in Wyoming and all its tributaries and and trying to figure out how to catch cutthroat trout, um, which was just a it was such a rewarding experience. I feel so lucky to be able to to do that in that beautiful place. Yes, it is very beautiful. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then so did that So you did that, and then did that lead into some jobs in Wyoming?
SPEAKER_00It did, yeah. So so I was I was really kind of at this point, I was starting to get interested in in the biology in these areas. And the first step was like, well, maybe I can get a job as a fisheries technician. I love these rivers. So I just contacted the folks down at Wyoming Game and Fish and was lucky enough to get a job as a as a fisheries technician with Wyoming Game and Fish.
SPEAKER_01With a criminal, uh a degree in criminal, yeah, uh criminal justice. Is that I to this day I don't know how that happened. Criminology, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Um, and that was you know, that was I mean, what a what a job for a young kid just electrofishing and doing population surveys on the snake river. It's it was pretty neat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh pretty amazing to be getting paid for something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yep.
SPEAKER_01And then did that so I'm trying I'm trying to figure out the transition from Wyoming and the and how that happened to how that got you here in Montana or Montana State.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So from there it was, you know, they they kind of cut you off after two years. They don't let you be a technician forever. Um, so it was this search for more. What else can I do to kind of boost my resume? Because at this point, graduate school was on my radar as something I wanted to do at some point. So I wanted to pursue a career in ecology.
SPEAKER_01So but you really didn't want to have to go back and get an undergraduate degree in ecology, right? That would have been another, I'm sure, a couple years. I mean, some of the classes obviously would have transferred, but but you didn't have the the background in in the in the ologies.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. No, I did not. Um, and it just wasn't really in in my timeline. The way I figured it, it was like I can't do another four years an undergraduate. So I just started looking for more jobs and was lucky enough to get a job with the a local conservation district down in Jackson, so the Tetong Conservation District. And that job was was more general in the sense that it was just kind of looking at protecting all the water resources down there. So I was I got this great exposure to how to do water quality testing in different rivers. I had this this great mentor down there who really pushed data management and data analysis on me. So I had no experience with that stuff in my undergraduate degree, but he, this mentor, Carlin Girard, he was fresh out of graduate school, and he's like, if you want to go to graduate school, learn this program, it's called R, and learn how to manage and wrangle data. So he kind of shoved me in the back room and said, like, go play around with this program, which was it was it was great for me. Yep. That's great.
SPEAKER_01So um just backtracking just a little bit before we get into uh to um your research in here at Montana State, what what really compelled you to pursue a career in conservation?
SPEAKER_00So as I've mentioned, I was I was heavy into the fishing, and then that you know that that got into me really and getting into hunting and enjoying that. And and after a while, after doing this for three or four years, I kind of started to realize that I was taking a serious toll on some of these ecological systems in the way that you know inevitably you you probably kill fish, even if you're practicing catch and release fishing. You're undoubtedly you're killing elk and deer if you're out there hunting. You're you're driving on muddy roads that contribute to who knows what suspended sediment loads in rivers. So all this was kind of dragging on me. Like, what have I done to kind of give back? And then it was this this idea like, well, I should really pursue this career in conservation and try to at least mitigate for what I've done in the past to these ecosystems.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's yeah, yeah, that's um that's very forward-thinking of you. Yeah, yeah, thanks. So yeah, you had this um, you know, this drive to come out to the West and and you know, obviously from what you just said, you have this kind of background of of conservation, whether you knew it at the time or not, you know, as you were um hunting and fishing, you recognized that that folks were managing those in such a way that you could you could um you know use those resources and that they would be there for you uh in in future years or for certainly for future generations. So you had that kind of mindset going on. And I'm just curious, was there somebody that was instrumental in triggering that conservation mindset, even though you might not have had it when you were getting your bachelor's degree in criminology, it it or it wasn't at the forefront of that. It certainly was there.
SPEAKER_00Yes, no, you're absolutely right. Um, and that that that mentality started at a really young age for me, and it was it was really triggered by my father, and and just observing him and how he approached the natural world. Um, I remember, well, from as early as I can remember, I can I can relate to stories where he would be driving on the you know busy interstates in in southern Massachusetts up through Maine, and I'd be in the back seat and he would, you know, he'd all all of a sudden get incredibly excited in the front seat and he'd be pointing at some raptor in a tree. And I remember, you know, from an early age being like, well, is he how is he seeing the bird if he's supposed to be paying attention to the highway here? So it were it was just little things like that, just even even in in a place like Massachusetts, seeing seeing how my father was was so excited by the nuances that you could see in nature, even in suburban Massachusetts, like I said. Um, you know, if we were hiking on a trail, he would he'd be spotting things like lady slippers way off the trail in the woods, and he'd take us out there to kind of check that out. Um and he he was really into really into birding as well, which which I thought was was so neat just to see the the complexities of these ecosystems, like I said, in suburban Massachusetts. You don't picture that, but he was able to see it, and it really I mean it's your father. That if your father thinks something's cool, most of the time you're gonna be into it at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's that's amazing. So what kind of, if you don't mind, what sparked his interest in kind of um um sharing that information with you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so he he actually went, I think in the early 80s, he went up to get his degree at Dalhousie University up in Nova Scotia, Canada. So he got a degree in biology up there. And he he didn't end up pursuing a career in ecology, he was kind of at the front end of um coding for banking systems when that was really blown up. They needed data management, and he went into a program and ended up, you know, pursuing a career as a database engineer, but but it was it always stuck with him. That that kind of love of nature was always there, and he was volunteering for for different organizations and going on on you know different bird watches to to count pelagic birds out in uh the northeast. So that's great. It never left, yeah. Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so just going back to you talking about R and him being a coder now it all starting to come together, right? You have a natural tendency to I never would have expected that.
SPEAKER_00You asked me five to eight years ago if I would be concerned about data management and coding, I would have said absolutely not. But yeah, I guess it's in my genes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. Um, you know, graduate school is is um for those of that that haven't experienced it, is it's a very fun time, but it's also a very challenging time. And and our profession, the conservation profession, is is quite competitive. There's a lot of people that want to do it. And to do it at the level that you're made, you know, you're a decision maker, as you alluded to, it's it's a it takes a master's degree and certainly to get into academia PhD. And so there's a lot of hurdles along the way from you know getting your bachelor's degree or even being in in high school and getting to the point where you are now. Um have you faced some hurdles that that you'd like to share with us?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um, I think this this whole process of of getting accepted to a graduate program was incredibly taxing for me personally. Um it was you know, I probably spent five years just emailing professors all across the country. And if you've ever done that, you know that you're faced with a lot of no responses, which which can be really demoralizing. Right. And I think uh having encouragement from from people who have been through the process was really helpful. You know, them telling me to just keep at it, just do what you can. In the meantime, keep sell keep sending me emails, but volunteer, do whatever you can to show that you're still interested in in really pursuing this this graduate program. So that that like I said, it was it was very taxing, but I think just sticking to it is what helped me in the long run. And ultimately it took me moving here, me saying that hey, Montana State, this is the this is the program I really want to be in. I've just gotta go there and I've gotta try to meet face to face with these people. They might they might know my name now from all those emails I've sent them, and they can put a you know a picture to the face, and we'll see if we can make it work. And eventually it did. I was lucky enough in a in a a spot opened up and got the interview, and now we're we're here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and some just some things that I've been thinking about as you were you were saying that. One is just I don't want to make it about me, but you know, I've learned a lot as a as an advisor when you get those emails. I used to not pay a lot of attention to them, some I wouldn't respond to, but through the years I've learned just from talking to people like yourself that it is important to respond to those. And, you know, to say, hey, thanks for for um the interest in our program. Your CV looks great. Unfortunately, I don't have any openings at this time, you know, kind of good luck in your career development. That that's better than known response, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would I would agree. I mean, I would have loved to see some of those emails. Yeah, just as a morale booster. I mean, at least this person looked at my CV. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh the other thing is, is, you know, it's so competitive, you know. We'll get, especially at Montana State, you know, for a for a position that I fly, I might get 80, 100 applicants, and the top 20 are just unbelievable. And it comes down to, you know, personality and is this somebody that I like that we can work together? Will they work with me? Can I work with them? Are they going to fit with the lab? And so showing up here and visiting face to face and some of those things, man, that's huge. That makes a big difference. And not everybody can do that, and I understand that. But if you have the opportunity to do that, that just is really um another feather in the cap. And especially for you, given kind of what your bachelor's was. I mean, that's that's that's to be sitting in this chair and interviewing with me in our program with a bachelor's degree in criminology, that's that's an impressive feat. So you should be proud of yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I appreciate it. It like, you know, as you know, it didn't come easy, but if you're out there without the the necessary degrees and you're listening, I'd say just keep keep at it because it can be done.
SPEAKER_01Can be done. Yeah. So kind of along the this theme, do you find yourself, um maybe not now, you're a little further into your program, um, but at the beginning, did you find yourself having to play catch up in terms of kind of the basic ecology and things like that, given your colleagues in in the department had a undergraduate degree maybe in ecology or fish and wildlife management?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So there was I would say a good year and a half of me suffering from this imposter syndrome, this idea that like I I shouldn't be here. Everyone around me is so incredibly gifted at what they do. And how you know, wh why do I deserve to be here? What did I do? I don't know what the heck this person's talking about at lab meeting, and this is my colleague in the same field as me. So yes, the answer is it was I I felt like I've been playing catch up since I've gotten here. But I will say that the the the process of going through those qualifying exams was totally invaluable for me. I mean it was it was hard and it was a long process, but being able to kind of take a step back from everything you're doing and read all the fundamental literature in the field and and for me learn this stuff for the first time, really. Um, it was it was great. So it it took a while for me to start to feel like okay, I can do this, but um it it did finally happen over time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's great. And you know, I still have imposter syndrome sometimes. Right. Of course. You may never get over that. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that's good segue into you know your your qualifying exam, and that's all part of your learning a lot of fundamentals of ecology and how that relates to uh your research that you're doing here at Montana State University. So, can you tell us a little bit about your research um for your master's degree?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So my research, I do research in rivers. Um specifically, I look at how invertebrates, small aquatic insects, can impact physical process in rivers, like how how like flow dynamics, for example. Um a lot. So well, some listeners, if they're anglers, they might be familiar with caddisflies. But if you're not familiar with catsflies, they're just uh uh this order of insects. They spend their larval stage or their juvenile stage in the stream, so they're underwater, and then as adults they emerge and they fly around the terrestrial landscape, they look like these little moths. But I'm really interested in what they do to the rivers in their aquatic stage when they're living down there. So the specific family of caddisflies look at is they're called net spinning catsflies. So they spin these really intricate silk webs in the stream bed, much like a spider would spin a silk web to catch food. Their silk webs catch organic matter and food that's floating through the river column, catch it in their web and then they eat it. And what what we're really interested in, my lab and and my research specifically, is looking at how these webs can actually potentially alter the the flow of water that's going from the river in the stream down into the like into the groundwater or the hyperheic zone, as we might call it.
SPEAKER_01And so there's enough of these catusflies in the stream to affect the the exchange of water from the stream down into the groundwater?
SPEAKER_00We we think so. So there these these catusflies can be in incredibly dense aggregates and streams, so up sometimes up to 10,000 of them per square meter. Wow. That's it's a lot of these net structures that could be altering the flow of water down there.
SPEAKER_01And so I'm just thinking about these nets, and I'm thinking about like my shed and my backyard, and you know, I got all these old spider webs that that hang around. And are there I was just I was just thinking about this, are there old caddis fly nets down there that you know are no longer used, but maybe they're still trapping stuff?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Okay, yeah. And we don't, I don't know exactly how long they'll persist in the stream bed, because as you know, they get you get bed altering altering floods that'll move huge rocks down the stream bed. That could destroy those kind of aggregations of old nets. But if that's not occurring, those nets could persist in the stream.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's cool. And so you're studying how excuse me, how the catasfly nets are affecting the the movement of water and and did you also say nutrients through from the from the stream to the to the hyperreag zone or or or groundwater?
SPEAKER_00So we're I'm not specifically looking at nutrients yet. That would be that's That's kind of the next step. But I'm really just looking at the the this movement of water from the stream down into the hyperric zone, which is this it's this zone of saturation that's under almost all rivers where your stream water and your groundwater really start to mix. Yeah. And and this zone is it's important because it's it can be rich with life. It's rich with A, there's invertebrates that live down in the gravels under rivers, but it's also rich with like heterotrophic bacteria, biofilms, things that are that are processing carbon ultimately. They're capturing this energy and potentially moving it up the food web.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very interesting. And I'm sitting here thinking about the the scale that you have to measure this on. And so I'm wondering how on earth do you measure the flow of water from the stream to the hyper rig zone? And how do you how do you capture this and and measure the effect of these nets, thinking of how small these cattle flies are?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. And we initially we tried to to do this in streams. We kind of just really went for it. Let's just get out in the field and see what we can do. And it it quickly it was clear that this was going to be incredibly difficult to answer in a natural setting. So we've since moved to laboratory experiments to actually answer this question. And you what we do is we build these instruments, they're called a they're called permeameters, which as you can guess, they measure the the permeability of some sample that you might have. So they're these vertically oriented PVC columns, and we fill them with gravels, and we essentially run water through these columns, and we can get an estimate of the permeability of the gravel. And then I can add catuslies to the system and measure again, and I can get an estimate of the change in permeability in the presence of these catusflies and in the absence.
SPEAKER_01And so I was just thinking, you know, we have uh I study pallid sturgeon in early life history, and sometimes uh the the young sturgeon don't behave in the lab like we want them to. When you put catusflies in that container, do they immediately start building webs? Are they are they pretty good lab animals?
SPEAKER_00They actually are really good lab manuals. They're um they handle changes in temperature really well, so they can be you know up to 20 degrees Celsius, down to five degrees Celsius, and they don't, as far as I can tell in my experiments, they don't change their behavior much. Um they'll their goal is to capture food, and to do that, they need to build their nets and they start building right away.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I took an aquatic entomology class as an undergrad and I loved it, and I probably should have stuck with that. Yeah, right. Um I'm curious, are there other animals besides the cattus fly that might be these uh I guess you're kind of talking about ecosystem engineers, uh other um macroinvertebrates at that scale that are doing some similar things as well as well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there are. So there's the the one that's the most studied, I would say, is is this tubific worm. It's this this burrowing worm. And there's been a lot of research with with these insects because they well, let me back up. So if you have a if you have a river, you could have the deposition of of fine sediment in this this river. And what that could do is that can really prevent the flow of water from the surface down into this hyperrheic zone. And that can that can block the flow of oxygen down into the zone, which is really critical for metabolic processes. And what these worms tend to do is they're they dig these little tunnels as they're feeding through this fine sediment, and those little tunnels in the fine sediment create these conduits of water. So water can now move from the surface down into those deeper sediments and really deliver oxygen down there that's that's needed for these key metabolic processes. So that's that's a little bit it's it's essentially the opposite of my research. They're looking at how these worms can increase the flow of water into this zone, whereas my research looks at at how the nets can kind of reduce that flux and and and slow things down through that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's amazing to just think of all those processes that are current on such that fine scale. And when you look at a river, you know, most people don't even know that all that's going on down there, you know, and so it's just interesting. It's it's great that you're working on that. What, if you could kind of crystal ball, what would be the most important thing that you could discover given your research?
SPEAKER_00I think I think the most important thing that we could discover is that these nets can actually decrease the permeability of these bed sediments. And what that really means for the the larger picture is down in this zone, and you know, I know it's hard to conceptualize if you've never really dug through river sediments before, but this zone is like as I've mentioned, it's really rich in life. There are all these biofilms and these bacteria down there that are capturing this carbon that's floating through the river column in one form or the other. And if these cattle flies are slowing down that water in these pore spaces by building their nets, that you're you're put potentially providing all those organisms down there better opportunities to then capture that carbon and you know aggregate it into there or assimilate it into biomass, and then it can move up the food chain. If they're not there, you just have water moving quickly through that zone, and as you know, water flows downstream and ultimately to the ocean. So they could really potentially be increasing the retention time of rivers, it can increase their ability to retain things like carbon in the in the river ecosystem or retain nutrients in the system rather than just exporting them out to the ocean.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's very interesting, very cool. So cast flies are are are important not just for fish. Yeah, right. That's amazing, right? To think of who knew. Yep. Um uh so our last question here is is kind of a silly question, but we found that that folks struggle with it. Even I struggled with it when I was interviewed. But uh just thinking about what is your favorite animal or plant or both?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that is a hard question. And you know, I'm tempted to say whatever animal or plant I'm looking at at the time of the question, but there's not much. I see some skulls in here. Um but so fish.
SPEAKER_01I can see fish are uh in your radar.
SPEAKER_00Yep. I would say right now I'm pretty infatuated with the elk. Um I love spending time kind of kind of tracking elk all times of the year, short of the winter. But in the fall, I obviously love I love going out and hunting them and taking pictures of them. And then in the spring, one of my favorite things to do is go out and look for their shed antlers. It's it's to me, it's such a cool time to be out walking around in these wilderness areas in national forests because it's like this this renewal. It's this right, you see the green up, and the elk have since moved off their winter range, and you're you're like you're so close, you almost feel like they were there yesterday walking around just trying to get through this tough winter, and then you find a a 10-pound antler, and it's like this this awesome prize. Yeah, yeah. Um so I'd I'd have to say the elk. I wish I could I wish I was better at at hunting them. I wish I knew their patterns better in the fall. But um, yeah, I just think they're they're an incredible species. They they live this hard life, they're being pursued by wolves and hunters, and and they're carrying these, you know, this massive headgear. And somehow they do it year to year and survive these these harsh, harsh, cold winters. Yeah, it's it's incredible.
SPEAKER_01Well, Mike, uh, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today, and I wish you the best in your studies at Montana State University and your research on cataswals.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks so much, Chris. This was a fun experience.
SPEAKER_01Um, thanks for listening to today's Voices of Conservation Science, and please uh spread the word about this podcast.