Online television channel Annandale TV recently spoke to Aileen Smith and Nick Chisholm of the River Annan Trust to learn about their new riverfly monitoring project. 17 volunteers have been monitoring the Annan in Dumfries & Galloway, after attending a RMI workshop in July this year hosted by the trust. See the video on the Annandale TV website.

National Insect Week (NIW) began on Monday 25 June, with events taking place across the UK through to Sunday 1 July. Find fascinating insect facts, follow the NIW blog and get details of all the events on the website. This is a great time of year to head out in search of riverflies, with the added incentive that this year's Riverfly Photography Competition opened this week as part of NIW.

A dedicated monitoring programme has revealed small numbers of the Killer shrimp, Dikerogammarus villosus, in an area of Barton Broad, Norfolk. This is a highly invasive non-native species, currently known only from three other sites in England and Wales. If the shrimp became established and widespread in the UK it could pose a serious threat to native species.

Anglers’ Monitoring Initiative season fast approaching, Orange-striped stonefly survey, new adult caddis key and more in the Spring Newsletter 2012.
 

The Orange-striped stonefly is the subject of a new survey by the Riverfly Recording Schemes. British populations of the Orange-striped stonefly have recently been classified as a seperate species to Perlodes microcephalus, a species common across the rest of Europe. The new name for the British species is Perlodes mortoni. We need to know the distribution of Orange-striped stoneflies in the UK to confirm its species status and help inform conservation action.