The Abundance of Invertebrates at Different Grass Heights

The experiment was conducted from 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm on Tuesday October 13th 2015 with a temperature around 17°C with strong wind and occasional showers and on Tuesday October 20th 2015 with a temperature around 17°C with cloudy skies and light rain showers. The experiment was done together with Rachel Titus, Laiba Khan and Maleeha Maleeha. The experiment happened around the grassland area near Stong Pond at York University. We used 18 pan traps (6 of each colour: blue, white and yellow) in 3 different heights of grass locations: tall unmowed grass, short mowed grass and grass patches around the parking lot area. In the pattern blue, white and yellow approximately one metre apart from each other in all 3 locations. Each pan trap was filled with soapy water enough to cover the bottom of the pan trap. We checked the pan traps around 30 minutes after the pan traps were placed. Counting the amount of invertebrates found and identified what species they were in each pan trap for all three locations. In this experiment it allowed us to study if the number of invertebrates found in different locations would vary based on the height of grass.