Data for: The influence of an in-stream thermal gradient on chironomid emergence during winter

Abstract

Chironomid surface floating pupal exuviae were collected from November 2017 through March 2018 from sites within one head water trout stream, Ike's Creek, and two comparative head water trout streams, Pine Needles Creek and Arcola Mills Stream. Pupal exuviae were identified to genus and species. Relative abundance over time at each site was used to calculate Jaccard’s coefficient of similarity among sites and to observe if there were differences in community composition along the length of a trout stream with longitudinal thermal heterogeneity. Mean daily water temperatures were also collected from November 2017 to April 2018 from each of the sites. Mean daily air temperatures were obtained from November 2017 to April 2018 from the NOAA National Weather Service. This data were collected in order to create air-water linear regressions for trout stream sites over winter. Our goal was to determine if fine-scale thermal heterogeneity exists along a first and second order trout stream and to compare the thermal regime with two other trout streams. The data, here, are released in accordance with the terms of publication.