Week 4: Techniques and Sampling - Pan Trap Dataset Gathering int he Danby Woodlot & Grasslands at York University

On Tuesday September 29th at approximately from 2:45-5:30 pm, an experiment for the Pan Trap Dataset was conducted with the assistance of my four other group members including Ashley, Adam, Katherine, and Kate. Initially, the weather was partially cloudy with drizzling rain and as the time went on the rain got heavier, there was less sunlight and there was a cool breeze. As hypothesized before gathering our sampling data, the rain weather would have an influence on the abundance of insects that would come out of the soil and become observable on the surface of the ground. In other words, it was predicted that in most cases of insects, there would be a negative correlation between the amount of moisture gathered on the surface of the ground and the frequency at which insects would be observed. For this particular dataset experiment, three different colours of Solo Bowls (white, blue and yellow) were filled with soapy water and each placed in a group. Each group, consisting of three different coloured bowls were positioned at random places in the two distinct pre-set locations at the Danby Woodlot and the Grassland area. The reason for which three different colours were used was because of attempting to target variety of different insects which would be attracted to certain colours—such as bees which are specifically attracted to the colour yellow for pollination of flowers—and therefore, this way our data would be unbiased and would include most insects that were present in that environment. In order to make sure that we were doing random sampling and further lower the chance of bias in our data collection, each group of three bowls were placed at different random locations within the Woodlot or Grassland site. Similarly, we have placed the bowls in two different environmental settings of Woodlot and Grassland areas due to attempting to gather unbiased and random data. This way, perhaps more variety of insects present in different environmental settings can be gathered. At the end, as it was observed and counted, there was more variety of insects present in the Grassland area. Perhaps, insects were able to take shelter among the heavy profusion of grass on the surface of the ground instead of bare surface of the damp Earth which was more observed in the Woodlot area. Insects can take refuge in hollow logs and in between tree branches and trunks during rain, so perhaps that is the reason why they were noticeably absent in the data samples from the Woodlot area. Overall, our hypothesis was to some extent correct when it came to considering the results of our data collection from the Woodlot area. Not many insects were present on the damp muddy soil of the Woodlot due to heavy pouring rain. It is highly likely that most insects were hiding and taking shelter beneath the ground or in hollow tree trunks for their own survival.