Illinois Natural History Survey Reports

              1
I LLINOIS
NATURAL
HI STORY
S U R V E Y R e p o r t s
Summer 2002
No. 372
I N S I D E
Some Recent Changes
in the Illinois Flora
2
Effectiveness of Crop
Rotation on Corn Root-worms
3
Emerging Issues in
Catch-and-Release
Angling
4
What Happened to
the Franklin’s Ground
Squirrel?
5
Species Spotlight:
Caddisfl ies
6
Naturalist's Apprentice:
Build a Caddifl y Larva
and Case
7
Continued on back page
Dr. R. Weldon Larimore of the INHS Center for Aquatic Ecology uses newly developed electric
seine and fi sh shocker in Jordan Creek in 1950. Photo from INHS Image Archives
In July 1950, R. Weldon (Larry)
Larimore and Leonard Durham
of the Illinois Natural History
Survey (INHS) waded into Jor-dan
Creek near Fairmount with
what was then a newly developed
electric seine. From the mouth
of Jordan Creek where it empties
into the
Salt Fork
of the
Vermilion
River,
Lari-more
and
Durham
moved up-stream
for
four miles
systemati-cally
mea-suring
and
numbering
each pool
and ripple
and col-lecting,
marking,
and releas-ing
fi sh.
This
simple be-ginning
to
aquatic research on Jordan Creek
more than 50 years ago came to
spawn a legacy of data collection
and signifi cant publications that
continues in the 21st century. In
addition to Larimore and Durham,
a number of budding INHS sci-entists
cut their research teeth on
Jordan Creek and went on to be-come
leaders in aquatic biology.
New Endowment Honors INHS Researcher
These include Quentin Pickering,
William Childers, Carl Heckrote,
David Menzel, Charles Goldman,
Michael Duever, John Peterka, Da-vid
McGinty, David Andrews, Gary
Camenisch, and more recently Paul
Angermeier, Isaac Schlosser, and
Martin Jennings, among others.
James Karr worked with several of
these biologists and Jordan Creek
data to develop the widely used
Index of Biological Integrity. There
are few places on earth that have
been as intensively studied over
time as Jordan Creek.
Dr. Larimore, who is still en-gaged
in research at INHS, has
recently been honored with an
endowment in his name. The en-dowment
entitled the “R. Weldon
Larimore/Jordan Creek Endow-ment
Fund” was created by his
family to help perpetuate aquatic
research on Jordan Creek. An an-nual
award called the “R. Weldon
Larimore/Jordan Creek Award”
will be available to undergraduate
and graduate students as well as
INHS scientists who are involved
in aquatic biology research on
some aspect of Jordan Creek or
aquatic biology research on other
streams similar to Jordan Creek
in central Illinois. The endow-ment
fund will be administered