The Diversity and Abundance of Insect Species in a Grassland, and a Woodlot

Group Members: Loyal Tran, Anisa Amin, James Quach, Iiman Darman The group was split into two to save time; dataset 1 was collected with Loyal Tran. This data was collected at the Danby woodlot, and the grassland next to it on September 30, 2015 from 15:15 to 16:10. A 1m x 1m quadrat was used to collect 20 random samples, 10 from the grassland, and the other 10 from the woodlot. It was a sunny day with a few clouds in the sky. The weather was 16 degrees Celsius with a cool breeze. The ground was cool and damp as it was raining the day before. Insect abundance and number of RTU's was determined in each sample. Insect abundance is defined as the total number of insects in a quadrat and was determined by counting the total number of insects seen within 1 minute of observation. Each sample was observed for 1 minute. The environment in the quadrat was disturbed (i.e. moving plants, scattering the soil, etc.) as to see the insects that may have been hidden in the soil or by the surrounding vegetation. This allowed for us to observe many more individuals and RTU's. Number of RTU's is an estimate of the number of species and is defined as the number of different recognizable taxonomic units. This was determined by counting individuals with different physical characteristics. Any individuals that had major differences in physical characteristics were counted thought of as 2 RTU's. This data may be prone to error as visual observation is imprecise. Insects may have been camouflaged, too small, or hidden under surrounding vegetation or the soil. All of these characteristics may have affected the precision of this data.