Quake Lake to McAtee Bridge

wfmad

This is the Upper Madison Tributary Project, now reorganized as part of the Madison River summary. This is the core area for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks proposal for a major westslope cutthroat trout recovery effort.

Study area Maps

All of the maps below are linked to the same locater program that will give position coordinates as latitude/longitude, UTM and TRS for any point. It will also give the elevation, gradient and aspect direction, identify nearby named places with the nearest one also identified. If the position is on a major stream, the program will identify the river km for that stream, measured up from the mouth. If the position is near a worm sample location, the data for that site will also be given.

  1. Map with roads, railroads, and water
  2. Map with water only
  3. Map with water and worm sample results

Preliminary results

By the start of 1997 I have 17 samples from 12 streams and I have prepared 152 slides with 1196 worms from this area (mainstem excluded). Most of the samples came from October and November 1996. This appears to be a good time to get Tubifex samples to support whirling disease research. If Tubifex, or at least probable Tubifex, is not present by late autumn, there cannot be very many present during the spring and summer to transform the parasite. Early spring (pre-runoff) samples get more mature Tubifex, but these samples may be overly pessimistic with regards to the risk of whirling disease. Most initial samples came from near the mouths of creeks as this area usually integrates cumulative affects of any upstream disturbances, and it usually, but not always, has the most abundant Tubifex.

Based on the sampling to date in this area, Tubifex is present only in the the West Fork Madison River and Moose Creek. Small numbers of possible Tubifex were found in Hyde Creek, Horse Creek and more notably in Ruby Creek. I have no sign of tubifex in the Elk River, Freezeout Creek, Soap Creek, Gazelle Creek, Papoose Creek, Standard Creek or Squaw Creek. The relationship between stream disturbance and Tubifex holds perfectly well in this whole area. Almost all of these streams could be at risk of Tubifex and whirling disease if disturbance levels increase, but that should be fairly easy to reverse.

Tubifex summary by stream

Composite Aquatic Oligochaete Species List (mainstem and tributaries)

  • Haplotaxis gordioides (Hartmann)
  • Eiseniella tetraedra (Savigny)
  • Rhynchelmis sp?
  • Ilyodrilus templetoni (Southern)
  • Limnodrilus claparedianus Ratzel
  • Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri Claparede
  • Limnodrilus profundicola (Verrill)
  • Rhyacodrilus coccineus (Vejdovsky) (and possibly another species)
  • Tubifex tubifex (Muller)
  • Telmatodrilus vejdovskyi Eisen
  • Nais pseudobtusa? Piguet (and probably additional species or genera)
  • Nais behningi Michaelsen
  • Chaetogaster diaphanus (Gruithuisen)
  • Ophidonais serpentina (Muller)
  • Uncinais uncinata (Orsted)
  • Enchytraeidae

9 OCT 1996, Updated on 5 JAN 1997 D.L. Gustafson
Back to the Madison River Tubifex Summary
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dlg@rivers.oscs.montana.edu