Insect Species Diversity Across Different Types of Vegetation

Hypothesis Species diversity in the area vegetation is present is higher than area where vegetation is absent due to the abundant vegetation. Four students set out to grassland site at York university keele campus at 2:30 pm. Two areas in the grassland site were chosen to execute the experiment. One area where vegetation was present (area 1) had a high abundance of vegetation; the area was covered with tall and bushy plants highly disturbed grassland area. The second area where vegetation was absent (area 2) there were no tall plants and mainly comprised of flattened grass. In area 2 the students made sure that if there were any tall grass surrounding the pan traps it would be removed by hand or a shovel. Two line transects were laid out 18m across the areas and 9 pan traps of different colors were placed along the transect in a straight line line leaving 2m between each pan. The pan traps colors were 3 blue, 3 yellow, and 3 white these were placed in alternating colors in order to attract different types of insects. The pans were half filled with soapy water in order to catch the insects and the soaps purpose was to cut the surface tension in order for the insect to drown instantly. The pan traps were left undisturbed for two and a half hours. For each pan trap the students counted the number of insects captured in each pan and the record the number of different recognizable taxonomic units (rtus). A replicate was performed the following week at the same time. The weather conditions were different for both days. On the first day of collecting data it was windy and rainy, the following week the weather was partially cloudy and sunny no wind, puddles were present in both sites.