The Diversity and Abundance of Insects in Danby Woods Based on the Moisture Levels of the Soil

On October 19 and October 26, 2015, ths students from Bailey Hewitt's laboratory 01, in Christopher Lortie's BIOL 2050 class, went to Danby Woods to do group research. The class was split into groups of 4, except for my group which consisted of 5 students: myself, Antoni, Taylor, Hinal, and Amena. The five of us decided to collect insect abundance and disversity in the grassland and woodlot regions of Danby Woods using qudrats. We also wanted to see whether moisture in the soil would affect the number of insects we saw in certain regions of the woods. We planned on taking 60 quadrats, for a total of 120, per day and looking at each quadrat for 5 minutes. We used the random numbers website to determine how many steps we should take to reach our next experimental site. Four of us took four quadrats, doing 7-8 procedures each, while one person took the moisture meter and measured the moisture of each of our quadrats. On day 1, the weather was approximately 14 degrees Celsius and partly cloudy, with a wind speed of 26 km per hour and a humidity of 49%. This day not as many insects were witnessed, both in high moisture and low moisture levels. This could be because of the weather that day, it was extremely windy and somewhat cold. On day 2, the weather was approximately 9 degrees Celsius, with a wind speed of 14 km per hour and 57% humidity. On this day, it was also evident that moisture did not play a critical role in the abundance and diversity of insects, as the moisture levels did not correlate with an increase or decrease in insects. Again, the weather was chilly that day, but it was not as windy as it was on day 1. Although, it is certain that the woodlot had much less diversity and abundance than the grassland, but because the data was not consistent it is difficult to connect.