The Correlation between Insect abundance and plant density or plant height

Group Members: Xi Qiu, Michael Angelini, Kate Villanueva Britanico, Kristine Del Rosario, Nassar EnKaye The purpose of this experiment is to see whether or not there will be a noticeable positive or negative correlation between insect abundance and plant height or the level of crowding of plants in the grasslands. The experiment was conducted on two different days, Wednesday October 14th and Wednesday October 21st 2015, at the grasslands near York University. The weather on October 14th was partially cloudy with the temperature of 14 degrees Celsius whereas on October 21st, the weather was overcast and windy with the temperature of 12 degrees Celsius during the experiment. The duration of the experiment and data collecting was 2.5 hours on each day, from 3 pm to 5:30 pm. The grassland consists mostly tall grass, a few trees and short plants. The equipment used during this experiment including 2 quadrants (one meter by one meter), 40 pans of the same color, soapy water, and 2 tape measures. To collect the data, all the pans were marked from 1 to 40 first, 8 pans were then assigned to each group member to place randomly over the grassland, and then fill them with soapy water at the same time place the quadrat around the pan, measure and estimate the average plant height with the tap measure and estimate the level of crowding within the quadrat. After everything was measured, the group waited for 1 and half hours before counting the numbers of insects caught within each pans. Since it rained on the day before October 21st and during the experiment it was cold and windy, the data collected on October 21st shows significant less insect abundance than the data collected on October 14th. However from the overall data collected over these two days, no significant correlation has shown between the insect abundance and the level of crowding or the average plant height.