How different pan colour in mowed vs. unmowed grassland affect species abundance

The data was collected on two days – Thursday, October 15, 2015 and Thursday, October 22, 2015. Data was collected between 3:00 pm and 4:15 pm on both days. The location was at Danby Grassland at York University – Keele Campus. The weather at the time of collecting data on day 1 was roughly 16 degrees Celsius, mostly cloudy with showers. When it started to rain, temperatures quickly dropped to 10 degrees Celsius. There were high winds of 50km/h and gusts of 61km/h. On day 2, the temperature when collecting data was sunny and 16 degrees Celsius. However, it felt more like 13 degrees Celsius with winds of 30km/h and gusts of 41km/h. Data was collected in both the mowed and un-mowed areas of the grassland. Mowed grassland has been mowed for about a month. In both mowed and un-mowed grasslands, there was grass surrounded by various plants, including milkweed, golden rod, purple aster, white aster, few scattered trees, and common aster - the most dominated plant. However, in un-mowed grassland, plants were denser and taller, when compared to mowed grassland. The collection of data was done in a group of four, which included – Vivian Do, Amandeep Bains, Stephanie Achaiya, and Alexander Karakatganis. To collect the data, a 12 meter transect was randomly placed on both sites - un-mowed grassland and mowed grassland, for both days. Three coloured pans were used in this experiment – yellow, blue and white. 4 of each pan colour, a total of 12 pans were used in each site. Therefore, there were a total of 24 replications. The coloured pans were placed along the 12-meter transect, each colour pan being 1 meter apart from the other, in the order of yellow, white, and blue. Once the pans were placed down, the pans were filled with soapy water for the collection of insects and a timer was then set for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Once the time was over, abundance – total number of insect species of each pan in each site was counted using a quick eye count and with the aid of tweezers. Data was recorded. The sample size was n=48. However, this data may be prone to error, depending on the sample sorter. Due to the small size of insects, characteristics - such as camouflage or due to the fact that the insects may be hidden, will hinder our ability to count them in. This leads to the total count being affected, leading to a lower count. The purpose of this dataset was to determine how different pan colours in two different sites (mowed and un-mowed grassland) has an effect on the abundance of insect species.