Week 6 & 7 Experimental Design: Impact of the Anthropocene on bug abundance

The experiment was conducted in the course of 2 weeks. The first 6 Replicates (1-6) were taken on 13 October 2015 in the Danby Grasslands at York University Keele Campus. These replicates were taken on the side of the Danby Grasslands closest to York University. The data was collected between 2:56- 4:44pm, the temperature went from 15°C at the beginning of the experiment to 11°C towards the end. It was a grey, overcast day with a lot of wind. The second set of replicates (7-12) were taken on 20 October 2015 in the Danby Grasslands at York University Keele campus. However this time the data was collected on the side of the grasslands closest to Keele Street between 3:19-5:00pm. It was an overcast day and there was light rain throughout the experiment. The temperature was consistent and remained 12°C. The entire experiment was conducted with classmates Bryson Chandrarajan, Stanley Igiebor and Sharan Saravanabavan.

The purpose of the experiment was to investigating the health of the Danby Grasslands by determining the abundance of insects to see what affect the Anthropocene has had on it thus far, in order to prevent further disturbance. The two factors we studied were: distance from human disturbance/interference and the number of pieces of garbage. Our response was the abundance of insects. The hypothesis for this experiment was that both the Anthropocene (human disturbance) and the disposal of garbage in natural environments such as the Danby Grasslands affects insect habitats, thus leading to a decrease in the abundance of insects.

The predictions we made were:

Distance from human interference- Response: The abundance of insects will be higher further away from human disturbance where the natural system has not been disrupted and the health of the Grasslands has not declined.

Number of garbage pieces- Response: The abundance of insects will be higher where there are less pieces of garbage which remain in the natural system affecting insect habitats.

To conduct this experiment we used two methods. Sweep net dataset: We used sweep net and transect. A 30m transect was set in the Danby Grasslands from the outskirts (close to human interference) towards the centre of the grasslands. We walked up and down the first 5m of transect with the sweep net for 2 mins and recorded the total number of insects captured. Every 5 meters was considered a new group, the first 5 meters was Group 1 and the last was Group 6. This procedure was repeated for the entire 30 meter transect and 12 replicates were obtained. The second method was a distance-based dataset: we used the same transect used for the sweep net dataset however this time we counted all the pieces of garbage found every 5m for the 30m, along the transect.

As mentioned above both days were overcast. On the 13th October 2015, the biggest problem was that it was very windy. The wind was constantly blowing the grass and vegetation in the grassland as well as our sweep net. On the 20th October 2015, the biggest problem was the rain, it was a light rain however it had been like that all day thus the ground were we set our transects were wet and muddy and the vegetation and grass was covered in water droplets. This affected the sweep nets slightly due to the muddy, wet conditions of the Danby grasslands.