Mating Flights of \u3ci\u3eEphoron Album\u3c/i\u3e (Ephemeroptera: Polymitarcidae) in Michigan

Mating flights of the mayfly Ephoron album (Say) were observed on the Sturgeon River in Houghton County, Michigan, on five evenings between 16 and 22 August, 1977. Peak emergence occurred about 30 minutes befqre sunset on 19 August and the flight period lasted about two hours. Many more adult males than females were collected on three evenings, but on one evening females greatly outnumbered males collected

Effect of Sediment Copper on the Distribution of Benthic Macroinvertebrates in the Keweenaw Waterway

Benthic macroinvertebrates, sediment copper, and sediment particle size were examined in two areas of the Keweenaw Waterway. The north area is downdrift from deposits of copper tailings. South area sediment averaged 27% silt and clay and north area sediment 66%. South area sediment had an average copper content of 33 mg/kg and north area sediment 589 mg/kg. The number of invertebrates was 4.3 times greater in the south than the north. The average number of taxa at south stations was 20 and at north stations 8. Mollusks, mayflies, and crustaceans were common in the south but rare or absent in the north. Hexagenia was the most abundant animal in the south. A single individual was found in the north, at the only north station with low sediment copper. Three north stations with sediment particle size similar to south stations had the same restricted fauna of chironomids and oligochaetes as that found at other north stations. Equitability and Shannon-Wiener diversity values for most north stations did not indicate pollution because of the extremely low, and thus, even numbers of individuals collected in all taxa. Twenty-six taxa were common to both areas. Four taxa, found only in the north, were represented by five individuals. Twenty-five taxa, found only in the south, were represented by 1,007 individuals. The likely cause of the reduced invertebrate fauna in the north area is high levels of sediment copper. © 1981, International Association for Great Lakes Research. All rights reserved

Photometric redshift analysis in the Dark Energy Survey science verification data

We present results from a study of the photometric redshift performance of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), using the early data from a Science Verification period of observations in late 2012 and early 2013 that provided science-quality images for almost 200 sq. deg. at the nominal depth of the survey.We assess the photometric redshift (photo-z) performance using about 15 000 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts available from other surveys. These galaxies are used, in different configurations, as a calibration sample, and photo-z’s are obtained and studied using most of the existing photo-z codes. A weighting method in a multidimensional colour–magnitude space is applied to the spectroscopic sample in order to evaluate the photo-z performance with sets that mimic the full DES photometric sample, which is on average significantly deeper than the calibration sample due to the limited depth of spectroscopic surveys. Empirical photo-z methods using, for instance, artificial neural networks or random forests, yield the best performance in the tests, achieving core photo-z resolutions σ68 ∼ 0.08. Moreover, the results from most of the codes, including template-fitting methods, comfortably meet the DES requirements on photo-z performance, therefore, providing an excellent precedent for future DES data sets