Grassland Insect Count

The data for this lab was collected at York University's grassland at 3:00 P.M by Olivia Lazzaro. A 20 meter transect was layed out at the grassland and the observer walked along the transect using a sweep net to hit the plants that were passed in order to capture the insects flying in the air, or resting on the plant's leaves. It took 1 minute to walk along the 20 meter transect and once complete, the observer would hold the net up and count how many insects that were visibly caught in the net. In some cases the contense within the net were poured out slowly onto a blan piece of paper in order to identify the presence of smaller insects. Once the abundance of insects were recorded then the total number of difference species present were counted. These steps were repeated 10 times. This lab was conducted to determine approximately how many insects there are in the grassland and the number of different species present. The day the experiment was performed was sunny, without clowds and the temperature of the air was cool without a breeze. In addition, there were many birds present on the outskirts of the grassland.