yorku.grassland.woodlot.Sept27-2016.csv

The experiment was conducted on September 27, 2016 from 3:30-4:30 pm at Boyer’s Woodlot near Ian Macdonald Boulevard (Latitude 43.78, Longitude -79.50). The latitude and longitude were recorded by using an online GPS. The habitat is a grassland defined as an open area at least 250m by 250m in size with few trees, disturbed open space similar to grassland in size but with more mixed vegetation and more trails for people such as a university open commons. The other habitat is a woodlot which is a forest on campus and contains a pond defined as a small body of water at least 100m in diameter. The weather was 21 degrees Celsius and cloudy with a moderate breeze of 13-18 mph as shown on the Beaufort scale. It was predicted that there would be more insects in the grassland than the woodlot. Then, it was hypothesized that there would be more insects in the grassland because there are more flowering plants which attract insects that are looking for a food source. The hypothesis was supported by the data, having ten insects in total for the grassland while the woodlot had one insect in total. To conduct this experiment, the researcher stood northwest of Lumbers Building and started taking 25 steps into the grassland. The 25 steps corresponded to 25 m. The researcher was swinging a sweep net back and forth while taking the 25 steps and took 3 minutes per transect. Each transect was 5 metres apart. A total of 10 transects were used for both the woodlot and grassland, for a total of 20 transects. The total number of insects was recorded by counting them per transect, after being captured in the sweep net. The number of species was also recorded per transect by counting and classifying them as 'recognizable taxonomic units' as follows: ladybird beetles, june beetles, green capsid bugs, bees, and flies. The frequency was recorded by counting the different types of species collected per transect.