The Waterbug Workshop 7

11-13th of April 2012

Registration closes: 14th of March 2012 (but places are limited so register as early as you can).

Workshop details, cost and timetable are all in the flyer (download from the following link).

Waterbug Workshop Flyer

The workshop and scholarships (see below) are kindly sponsored by Melbourne Water.

We also offer a short refresher/intensive course .....

DEATH BY BUGS
(3/4 day refresher- 10th April 2012)
This day is for people who have a good knowledge of waterbugs but want to update their skills, or have specific bugs they want help with. We are happy for students to bring their own samples along, otherwise, we can provide a set of animal to look at. Contact John if you are interested in this day, as we tailor it to the attendees, so it is good to know what groups you are interested in beforehand.

Death by bugs is the day before the waterbug workshop, but you can come along to both if you are really tough. More info in the Waterbug Workshop flyer...

Workshop Scholarships
Two types of scholarship are available:

The Melbourne Water Scholarship for students or Community Group members from within the Port Phillip and Westernport regions and The Waterbug Company Scholarship ...for people from elsewhere in Australia.

Application is the same for both and simply involves describing in less than half a page why you would like to attend and emailing your application to John.

These scholarships are intended to make the workshop accessible to people without the dosh to cover the course as well as transport and accommodation. The scholarships only cover the cost of the course, and successful applicants will need to be able to travel to Monash for the three days to attend the course.

Both types of application are due: 5th of March 2012

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Waterbug Workshop Overview

The Waterbug Workshop is designed to give participants the skills to identify aquatic macroinvertebrates (waterbugs) to Order and Family Level (if you are interested in genus level identification skills, we would like to hear from you and we can organise more advanced workshops if needed).

In the course of the workshop participants are taught how to use taxonomic keys to identify waterbugs. The participants are then taken through the array of common families of aquatic macroinvertebrates from the easiest to the hardest to identify. Participants are encouraged to bring their own material that they want to identify at the workshop, this ensures that the knowledge they take home is relevant to them and not just based on a random set of animals that we found in Tom's farm dam the week before. The emphasis of the workshop is on building the skills to interpret the key descriptions rather than on parrot learning as many groups as possible. Hi-tech lab equipment is utilised to demonstrate the key identification features of each group as well as 'dead giveaways', shortcuts and 'folklore' material that will make your identification process that much easier and infinitely more fun.

The primary text used is The Waterbug Book (oddly enough) accompanied by more complex taxonomic keys produced by MDFRC and the classic book by WD Williams "Australian Freshwater Life".

Previous Waterbug Workshops
In order to get an idea of how students' knowledge has improved, they sit the '12 bug challenge' at the beginning of the course and then again at the end. In this test the participants are given a set of 12 bugs and asked to identify them to the lowest taxonomic level that they can. At the end of the course they are given a different sample of 12 bugs and sit the test again. The results of this test, as well as student feedback from past workshops, can be viewed in the links below.

Inaugural Waterbug Workshop assessment

Third Waterbug Workshop assessment

Fourth Waterbug Workshop assessment

Sixth Waterbug Workshop