Starting the 2026 with lots of plans and goals!

Happy New Year to all!

Happy Holidays!

Hurricanes are major disturbances that alter dramatically stream ecosystems. Here we looked at the stability and resilience trajectories of two small tropical streams following major hurricane impacts. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... @pabloguticr.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org

We hope everyone han a great Thanksgiving day!

Alisotrichia (Hydroptilidae: Trichoptera) - a curious microcaddisfly that, as a larva, does not build a case until it is ready to pupate. Almost all Hydroptilidae make silken cases, but Alisotrichia has a free-living larva and inhabits fast flowing habitats. This specimen is from Puerto Rico.

Heteragrion (Odonata: Heteragrionidae), one of the most beautiful damselfly larvae from Centra America! This predators are common in small forested streams, where they leave among leaves and under rocks.

Using automatic sensors in streams- Sharing some pics of our monitoring stations in Costa Rica. We're using sensors to monitor streams over time to understand how environments fluctuate and modify biotic community structure or ecosystem function.

Congratulations to our lab alumni on their professional achievements: - Pablo Gutiérrez began as an assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez - Mariely Vega began her work as a Policy Fellow with the NC Sea Grant program - Ana Meza shared her postdoctoral work at Macrolatinos

Big thanks to the Macrolatinos network and the organizers of the VII meeting in Colombia for this recognition!

We had a great time presenting our research at the VII Latin American Meeting of Freshwater Macroinvertebrates in Manizales, Colombia, last week. It was great to finally meet in person after several online meetings since the pandemic. www.macrolatinos.net

A beautiful helicopter damselfly (Megaloprepus caerulatus) in the rainforest!

Tropical research: What I think I'm going to see vs. what I'll actually see … Investigar en el trópico: Lo que pienso que voy a ver vs. lo que realmente estaré viendo…

Studying the effects of nutrients on organic matter decomposition in tropical streams. Our team is working at La Selva, Costa Rica, using cotton strips to evaluate the effects of natural phosphorus inputs on ecosystem function.

What’s our lab up to in Costa Rica this summer?

Time to start our summer field work in Costa Rica!

Gold-tipped Darner (Gynacantha tibiata: Aeshnidae) is an active flyer over swamps in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. #CostaRica #Wildlife #Odonata #Dragonflies #BugSky #nature #wildlife #animals #photography #Outdoors

A pretty dragonfly from the genus Aphylla (Gomphidae / Forceptails), from the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. This group likes swamps and ponds, the picture was taken in a seasonal swamp. #CostaRica #Wildlife #Odonata #Dragonflies #BugSky #nature #wildlife #animals #photography #Outdoors

Sharing information on aquatic insects during a fishing tournament in Puerto Rico. We had a wonderful time!

Remembering a great SFS meeting! We had a great time sharing our research at the 2025 meeting of the Society for Freshwater Science. It was a special meeting for us, as it took place in Puerto Rico for the first time. #2025SFS #SFS2025

A special session at SFS-2025 in honor of our doctoral mentor, Dr. Cathy Pringle. She was also recognized as a Fellow of the Society for Freshwater Science. We had a great time in Puerto Rico sharing memories and reconnecting with past members of the Pringle lab! #2025SFS #sfs2025

Congratulations to 2025 Society for Freshwater Science Fellow Dr. Catherine Pringle! freshwater-science.org/2025-sfs-fel... SFS Fellows are honored for sustained excellence in contributions to freshwater science. We look forward to celebrating you at #2025SFS!💧🧪🌎

We found a little souvenir to remember our SFS meeting in Puerto Rico! 😅 @freshwaterscience.bsky.social

So happy to see Dr. Eugènia Martí, great scientist and colleague from Catalonia, be inducted as SFS Fellow. So well deserved - an inspiration for us all! #SFS2025

Here’s the list of presentations from our lab members and collaborators at the annual meeting of the Society for Freshwater Sciences in Puerto Rico. Very excited to share our work and meet old and new friends! #2025SFS

Presenting our urban stream research at the Symposium of Urbanization and Stream Ecology in Puerto Rico #SUSE7

Ending another semester at #NCSU with the presentations of our undergraduate students. Excellent researchers!

Dragonfly sampling at La Selva Research Station, #CostaRica

A short visit to La Selva Research Station, #CostaRica. Just enough time to deliver supplies and work on a few samples! A lovely rainforest! Pink insects- we use a dye to facilitate finding them among leaves and sediments.

Enjoying a quiet week at #NCSU ... Spring break time!

Macroinvertebrate sampling workshop! We had a great time with LUQ-LTER technicians sampling the stream and teaching them how to study aquatic organisms in our long-term sampling sites.

Freshwater shrimp as macroconsumers - these are pictures of our study stream in Puerto Rico where shrimp are dominant. Only 20 days of exclusion and the difference between control and exclusion are rather clear. Shrimp maintain tiles clean of sediment, with little algae, and few insects! 🧪

Woody debris breaks down faster in tropical streams with high phosphorus. Marzolf et al. 2025. On the breakdown of woody ... in Neotropical streams, Costa Rica. Freshwater Science www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... @nickmarzolf.bsky.social @ardonlab.bsky.social @alonsoramirez.bsky.social

Valentine cards to share with someone special who loves aquatic macroinvertebrates! Wishing everyone a happy Valentine's Day. Photos courtesy of lifeinfreshwater.net

Celebrating our great lab members on this International Day of Women and Girls in Science! #IDWGS #womenforscience #WomenInSTEM

Converge freshwater science series! Joining freshwater scientists from across the triangle area to discuss ideas in a safe, collegial atmosphere monthly. Thank you NCSU for hosting the January meeting! And thank you to @ardonlab.bsky.social and other presenters for leading discussions.

Sharing a passion for freshwater science- We spent an evening meeting people from different institutions in NC that work in aquatic ecosystems and talking about freshwater ecosystems This was part of the "Converge Freshwater Science Series" hosted at #NCSU @ardonlab.bsky.social @agdelv.bsky.social

Enjoying our tropical river, while doing some sampling too. 🧪 #tropicalstreams #ecology #streams

Read about our team member Mariely in this note from Macrolatinos! www.macrolatinos.net/2025/01/nota...

Learning about tropical streams with our team. Our techs in Puerto Rico shared a day with students and faculty from Mount Mercy Univ., who visited the forest to learn about our project and rainforest ecology. It was a fun day as well, including a stop in Sonadora to search for freshwater shrimp!

Perithemis domitia (Libellulidae) from Puerto Rico. An inhabitant of urban environments, able to deal with some pollution. This is the only species of Perithemis in Puerto Rico. #photo #photography #entomology #odonata #dragonfly

Starting a new semester full of ecology at #NCSU!

Happy New Year to all! Our lab is ready to continue working on our long-term projects, start new experiments and dissertation chapters, and continue sharing stories on social media. We'll keep you posted! #NCSU #HappyNewYear

Happy holidays everyone! 🎄

Remembering 2024 … busy year! #2024recap

Graduation time! 🥂👩‍🎓👩‍🎓🥂 #NCSU

Time to start our holiday celebrations! 🎄🎄🎄 #xmas #science #NCSU

Safety first! Ribbed bars are very useful to anchor things in our stream studies. However, they are also a safety hazard. Safety caps or something similar are always useful to avoid major accidents.

A great thanks giving day for our lab. Celebrating one candidate and two PhDs. 🥂🦃

Congratulations to Mariely on successfully defending her dissertation. Now Dr. Mariely Vega Gómez! Dissertation title: "The role of stream geomorphology in mediating tropical macroinvertebrate responses to climatic and hydrological extremes"