The 5th Waterbug Workshop (2010)

The fifth Waterbug workshop was held in APRIL at the Zoology labs at Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.

We're thinking of running a second workshop this year in either NSW or Qld, contact John if you are interested in attending this one.

Workshop Overview

The 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".

What the fifth Waterbug Workshop looked like

As well actually learning stuff, participants at the workshop also get to flex the right side of their brains. The creatures in the link below are mainly "spirit animals" composed from the parts of animals that the participants liked most over the course of the workshop....... so bear in mind as you browse, that you are staring straight into the deepest recesses of the attendees' souls....or at the very least, you are looking at the handiwork of brains that are close to popping.

There's a couple of shots of the rest of the workshop too....but it wasn't quite as photogenic.

click on the image above to see some photos of the workshop

2008 Waterbug ID tests

Everyone at the Third Waterbug Workshop improved their ID abilities, but it varied from person to person. If we compare their ability to name things using common names, their average scores (out of 12) went from 9.9 to 11.4 (significant using a paired t test....that's not a stutter it's a statistical test). At the Order level, their scores went from 9.6 to 11.3 (also significant) and their ability to ID to Family level went from 3.2 before the workshop to 9.5 ( just under 80% .....and also significant ). So we were pretty happy with how everyone went.

Statistics have the potential to be horribly abused ..... however, a little bit of honesty and explanatory notes can make things informative rather than deceptive.

This analysis compares people’s ID scores before and after the Third Waterbug Workshop.  We used two randomised, different vials of bugs so people couldn’t just learn the bugs by heart.

Each before and after comparison is calculated at the common name / higher taxonomic level (mainly order) / and lower taxonomic (mainly family) levels. So there are three assessments using the same test.  The ID was considered hierarchical, so if you can identify successfully to Family level it is assumed you are bright enough to look up the common name and what Order the Family belongs to.  In a fit of leniency, common names that refer to a single Family were considered correct to family level …but only for the before data.  The test was completed in half an hour in a packed schedule…so some people didn’t finish …this is true for both before and after tests….and drops the average scores a bit overall.

Reviews of previous Waterbug Workshops

a review of the First Waterbug Workshop.

... a biased review of what happened at the Third Waterbug Workshop.