Workflow designs can facilitate sample management for student-research teams doing taxonomic resource development with Trichoptera
Undergraduate research groups can face challenges in their involvement in multi-year or long-term research projects in maintaining momentum for projects, keeping consistency among student researchers, minimizing errors, and retaining institutional knowledge. Management of a large student group with a wide range of projects requires workflows that streamline sample processing for both multi-year projects and developing localized Trichoptera taxonomic identification resources for a specific study region. This paper presents workflows for undergraduate researchers to facilitate (1) sample sorting and identification of adult caddisflies from 4 years of pan trap samples, and (2) developing taxonomic “species pages” that include species description and illustrations for 300+ species of California caddisflies. For the past ten years, almost 80 undergraduate members of the research team have contributed to museum and ecological studies to gain skills recognizing adult Trichoptera, using keys, and gaining familiarity with taxonomic resources such as species descriptions. Undergraduate researchers participate for 2–3 semesters, learn to collaborate, and develop research skills to identify samples. Research team activities have contributed to a 4-year dataset of monthly adult activity in an intermittent stream that will be used for continuing research questions. Moreover, they have compiled a resource for species-level identifications for California caddisflies.
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