The BioBlitz inventory of life at Eagle Marsh on May 31 provides a valuable snapshot of plant, animal and insect life at the marsh and how it is doing. Approximately 120 researchers from around the state, including scientists, students and amateur experts, volunteered their time for BioBlitz this year. While it didn’t turn up any startling discoveries, some specimens are still being identified.

“The baseline data can then be used to promote or continue conservation efforts and management of specific properties, which may protect threatened species,” Professor Glené Mynhardt said in reply to an email.

BioBlitz teams also have found species that haven’t been documented previously or are completely new to science, added Mynhardt, who chairs the Indiana Academy of Science’s Biodiversity and Natural Areas Committee, which has organized BioBlitzes annually since 2005. She is a biology professor at Hanover College in southeast Indiana.

“In the past, the localities were primarily selected (for a BioBlitz) by the committee based on interest or sometimes when organizations expressed an interest in their properties being surveyed,” Mynhardt said. “More recently, the committee has been using a few select criteria to select sites. Our goal is to promote the understanding of Indiana’s biodiversity across the state, and we are prioritizing areas that have either not been surveyed, have unique habitats or ecosystems, or which have historical significance.”

LRWP asked the committee to consider doing an “anniversary” BioBlitz to see how Eagle Marsh has fared since its first BioBlitz in 2014, she said. The first BioBlitz identified 728 species living in the marsh.

BioBlitzes also provide information on the presence of invasive species, said Professor Mark Jordan, chair of the biological sciences department at Purdue Fort Wayne and secretary of the Little River Wetlands Project’s (LRWP) board of directors. “Are they on the property? How prevalent might they be?”

To do a BioBlitz survey, participants divide themselves into biological classification groups, such as beetles, birds, spiders, and reptiles and amphibians, said Jordan, who participated with the amphibians and reptiles group in 2014 and 2025. Each classification group typically has a leader. On the day of the BioBlitz, Jordan said group members decide how they want to survey the property being studied.

“The previous BioBlitz we had more salamanders than this time, which is unfortunate,” he said. “But we picked up one or two turtles species that hadn’t been documented before. They’re common species. They just hadn’t been surveyed or seen in the previous BioBlitz.”

This year, they also saw one Blanding’s turtle basking, Jordan said. The species, which is endangered in Indiana, likes to live in a large wetland habitat. “It’s nice that they’re still there,” added Jordan, who was excited they found two Blanding’s turtles during the 2014 BioBlitz.

The news got even better June 11 when Jordan received a call from Charles Sifferlen, LRWP’s Preserve and Volunteer Steward. Sifferlen discovered two female Blanding’s turtles crossing the Eagle Marsh barn road as he was leaving the property that evening.

“I think they’re both ones we’ve not seen before,” Jordan said. “We tend to mark them with an individual ID, and these two had not been marked. … Hopefully, that means that there’s more there than we realize.”

The spider survey group included biology Professor Marc A. Milne of the University of Indianapolis, who leads the university’s Spider Lab. Milne, who has participated in BioBlitzes since 2015, also is a member of the Indiana Academy of Science’s Biodiversity and Natural Areas Committee.

“As for all BioBlitzes, the Eagle Marsh BioBlitz allows me to get a better understanding of spider species distributions and diversity in Indiana,” Milne said in response to emailed questions. “The more we know about spider diversity in the state — regardless of location — the better prepared we are to properly protect and conserve those species,” he explained. “With Eagle Marsh being a wetland and with wetlands being severely threatened within the state due to recent government legislation and historical destruction, the more we know about the biodiversity within these areas, the more evidence we will possess to better argue for their protection.”

The Eagle Marsh BioBlitz spider group planned to identify spiders by using photography and specimen collection for laboratory analysis, Milne said.

“We had two excellent macrophotographers on our team this year, Rick Malad and Kevin Wiener, and they helped get great photos of spiders for identification,” Milne said. “For those that require collection, we used a sweep net to sweep over tall grass, a beating sheet to collect spiders from low-lying branches, and a vacuum. The vacuum is a modified leaf blower that was flipped in reverse with a net attached to the end. It helps collect small spiders from the ground and in moss.”

They found a great diversity of spiders, but at least one result surprised them.

“For example, we found a large number of wolf spiders (Lycosidae), sheet-web spiders (Linyphiidae), jumping spiders (Salticidae), sac spiders (Clubionidae), and running crab spiders (Philodromidae) among other families,” Milne said. “However, we did not find many long-jawed orb weavers (Tetragnathidae), which surprised me because those are spiders that live near wetter areas. Perhaps the unusual dryness of Eagle Marsh has reduced their numbers when we sampled.”

The wide variety of spiders they found indicates a healthy wetland with

high biodiversity, he added.

Milne hopes the Eagle Marsh BioBlitz results will educate the public about the importance of wetlands in maintaining biodiversity among invertebrates, which are creatures without backbones.

“Spiders are an important part of a wetland ecosystem as they help provide food for birds and consume insects in large numbers,” Milne said. “Spiders also help to reduce human parasites such as mosquitoes and flies, keeping their population numbers low. Spiders are not to be feared but, rather, should be celebrated for their positive contribution to helping maintain a thriving and functioning wetland ecosystem.”

Based on brief summaries BioBlitz groups shared at the end of the day, Jordan said researchers seem to have found as many or more species than during the 2014 BioBlitz at Eagle Marsh.

The final report on the 2025 BioBlitz likely will take at least a year to complete, Mynhardt said. Scientists have to identify all of the specimens they collected or recorded, she explained. With insects and spiders, that can involve looking at hundreds of specimens under a microscope.

Final results will be published in the journal Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, Mynhardt said. The data also will be made available to the public through the academy’s website, https://indianaacademyofscience.org/events/bioblitz-events-data. You can use that link to read the 2014 Eagle Marsh BioBlitz results.

BioBlitz findings can lead to future research projects, Mynhardt and Jordan said. For example, after the 2014 survey, LRWP became more interested in how turtles use Eagle Marsh, Jordan noted. He and some of his PFW students have been surveying turtle populations at the property each year since 2018. That included a two-year project to do radio tracking of snapping turtles in the marsh.

Whatever BioBlitz final results show, the data will be a welcome addition to existing knowledge about Eagle Marsh.