Effects of trash on invertebrate abundance at York University Woodlot and Grassland

Our group members are Jason, Coleen, Leeron, Zainab and Sanaz. The data collection for this experiment will take place during laboratory hours. Each lab is 3 hours long. Data collection will be completed during the first lab on October 14, 2014 at 2:30pm. If necessary, a second lab day will be used to continue collecting data on October 21, 2014 at 2:30pm. Our group will split up into two. Two people will go to the Woodlot, and 3 people will go to the Grassland. In order to examine the effects of trash on the abundance of invertebrates, we will randomly place 30 quadrats in the Grassland, 15 of which will be placed in areas with trash, and 15 of which will be placed in areas with no trash. For the quadrats with trash, we want to arbitrarily have 30% trash coverage, but we will make note of how much percentage of trash there actually is in our data, under “trash cover density”. The same thing will be repeated in the Woodlot. The quadrats used will be 1m by 1m provided by York University. To count the number of invertebrates in a quadrant, the entire quadrant will be observed. If an insect group (i.e. ants) is seen throughout the entire quadrant, the frequency of ants in ¼ of the quadrant will be multiplied by 4 to get the approximate number of ants in the entire quadrant. For other invertebrate groups (i.e. mosquitoes, moths, etc.) the entire quadrant will be observed and the frequency for each invertebrate group will be recorded. Later, we will identify how many different invertebrate groups there were, and how many invertebrates in total were in each quadrant for areas with, and without trash. With this data we can then study how the presence of trash affects the abundance of invertebrates. Then we can compare if there are differences between how trash affects invertebrate abundance in the Grasslands versus the Woodlot, and potential other variables in effect.