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Specialized adaption is when an organism adapts because of a specific circumstance or surrounding. For example, black fly larvae use a fan to capture their tiny food particles.
Organic materials are the natural matter found in a river such as leaves, twigs, branches, and dead aquatic life. Macroinvertebrate aquatic insects eat and grow on them.
Shredders are the group of aquatic insects which eat pre-softened food with large mouthparts. Their job is to take care of the larger pieces of of the organic material.
Collectors are the group that eat the little pieces of is the suttter that shredders leave behind. They have special adaptations too, like how the free-living caddisfly spins a net to catch their food.
Scrapers eat algae from the surface of rocks. They build homes out of stones and stick to them with suction cups and stickiness on their abdomens.
Predators eat the other types of aquatic insects. Their job is to keep the other groups' populations down.
Geomorphology is basically the study of the shape of the earth's structures. It relates to our blogging and classwork because the geomorphology of a stream affects the quality of its water, which affects the aquatic life, including the four groups of insects.
Riparian means of or around water. For instance, vegetation growing by a river could be called riparian vegetation.
Substrate is something on which something else grows. For example, the algae the scrapers eat grows on rocks. Those rocks would be substrate.
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Shredders, collectors, scrapers, and predators are found at the headwaters of a river. These functional feeding groups are found in this location because there is a wide variety of organic material found there, so the shredders and collectors are particularly abundant.
As well, all four groups are found at the mid reaches of a river. However, the abundance of shredders decreases, because most of the large organic material is found at the headwaters. The collectors still have plenty of smaller food, though, and scrapers have plenty of algae-ey rocks to feed off of too.
Collectors and predators are found in the lower reaches of a river. Collectors thrive because there is still no shortage of tiny pieces of organic material, even in the wider part of a river, Predators also live there because they can eat the collectors.
It is important to know which macroorganisms are present in a source of water because they affect the water quality too, just like all the other indicators I posted about. They affect the amount of natural matter in the water, as well as the other microorganisms that live in it too.
