In this blogpost, Hardik Babulal Dobariya shares his internship experience at the RSM test Facility in Landau in der Pfalz, Germany. Students of the Environmental Pollution Management (Ecotoxicology) Program complete an 8-week internship each year, the so-called “AMEO”. The AMEO is performed either at an external university, governmental or industrial research institute where students learn to apply the competences achieved during their study. Students also use this opportunity to travel and explore Germany.
“The Riparian Stream Mesocosm (RSM) test facility is situated in Landau and managed by the SystemLink Research Training group. I did my Internship in the test facility for nine weeks. I had the please of working at two different locations with varying responsibilities. The first task was to participate in an aquatic emergence sampling at the RSM test facility and the second task was to sort and taxonomically identify macroinvertebrates from drift samples in the ID Room of the University.
In my first task, I assisted Ph.D. students of the SystemLink Graduate College who collected aquatic insects from traps, The traps were placed on a flume and adjacent land (terrestrial zone) in each tunnel. The test facility had 16 different tunnels, which were further divided into four blocks. The sampling was done before, after and during flooding. The experiment aimed to estimate the effect of flooding on emergence of aquatic insects.
As part of my second task, I participated in the sorting and identification of drift macroinvertebrate samples from another experiment that was being conducted at RSM. This assignment has provided me with valuable insights on macroinvertebrate community composition and different life stages of macroinvertebrates.
The internship was fascinating and my colleagues were very cooperative. Besides fieldwork, I also had the opportunity to interact with exchange students from other countries, Additionally, I also had the chance to learn about terrestrial arthropod sampling using a vacuum machine and macroinvertebrate sampling from flume conducted by researchers at the test facility.”
Here are some beautiful glimpses from Hardik’s AMEO:-
