The Effect of Coloured Pan Traps and Floral Presence on Insect Abundance in Danby Grassland

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether the location (presence of flowers vs. no flowers) and colour of pan traps affect insect abundance in a grassland environment. The grassland was a large open area covered with grasses. On October 15th 2015, twelve pan traps were set out in a location where there was an abundance of 20 or more flowers and twelve pan traps were placed in an area where there was no abundance of flowers, resulting in a total of twenty-four pan traps altogether. Pan traps measured the abundance of insects in the grassland. Coloured pan traps were used to attract an abundance of insects and to observe their reactions to the different colours. The colour pattern used was white, blue and yellow and there were 8 pans per colour. Samples were collected systematically. One line transect was placed 4m along an area where there were 20 or more flowers to indicate a floral site. A second line transect was placed 4m along an area where there were no flowers to indicate a site with no floral presence. At each metre along each transect, three pan traps were placed perpendicular to the line transect in the consistent order of white, blue and yellow resulting in a total of 24 pan traps – 12 per site. Thus, the white pan trap was the closest to the transect whereas the yellow pan trap was placed the farthest. Soapy water was added halfway to each of the pan traps in order to trap the insects and submerge them into our pans for the duration of our experiment. After approximately two hours, data was collected and abundance of insects in each pan trap was recorded. Abundance measured the total number of insects observed in each pan trap. The experiment was repeated once more after exactly one week on October 22nd 2015. The setting of the experiment took place in the Danby grassland area on the northeast side of York University Keele Campus for the duration of approximately three hours on October 15th, 2015 (2:45-4:30pm) and October 22nd, 2015 (2:45-5:00pm). On October 15th, it was 17 degrees Celsius with 39% humidity and SW winds at 23 km/h indicating a fresh breeze on the Beaufort scale. The pressure was 1009mb and visibility was 16.1km. On October 22nd, it was 14 degrees Celsius with 59% humidity and NW winds at 29km/h indicating a strong breeze on the Beaufort scale. The pressure was 1019mb and visibility was 16.1km. Each of the 4 members – Simranjit Kang, Ava Kamali, Katrin Chapkis, Jennifer Mariathas – of group 4 contributed to collecting the data. We used coloured pan traps, soapy water and transects to analyze and record the dataset. Sample size is 48.