Ecology Lab 3 Dataset 2 - Pan Traps

The purpose of this experiment was to observe the abundance and recognizable taxanomic units (RTUs) and how different types of insects attract to different colours of pan traps in either a grassland or woodlot environment. Nine pan traps were set out in grassland while eight pan traps were set out in woodlot (due to TA error in miscalculation). Pan traps measured the abundance and diversity of different insects in either grassland or woodlot. Coloured pan traps were used to attracted an assortment of crawling and flying organisms. Colours used were white, blue, and yellow and were strategically arranged 1 metre apart in that specific colour order to observe the reactions of various organisms. Around 10-15mL of soapy water was added to each pan trap bowl to trap the organisms inside the pans and to make them stay in the bowls for the duration of our experiment. The coloured pan traps were set out 1 metre apart from each other around 3pm and data for abundance and # RTU’s was collected around 4:15pm. Abundance measured the total number of insects observed in each pan trap while #RTU’s measured the amount of different recognizable taxanomic units. The experiment took place at the Danby Grassland and Woodlot on the northeast side of York University Keele Campus for the duration of 2:45pm-5pm on October 1st, 2015. It was 15 degrees celsius with 54% humidity and ENE winds at 24km/h indicating a fresh breeze on the Beaufort scale. Pressure was 1029mb and visibility was 16.1km. Each of the 4 members - Simranjit Kang, Ava Kamali, Katrin Chapkis, Jennifer Mariathas - of group 4 contributed to collecting data. We used pan traps, soapy water, transects and tweezers to analyze and record the dataset. Sample size is 17.