Insect abundance in relation to location and plant abundance

This study was done to see whether insect abundance is affected by a large amount of plant life around the area or if the location is a major factor. It took place over two days which was Tuesday October 13th and Tuesday October 20th. The study took place between 2:45pm - 5:00pm on both days in the Dandy woodlot of the York university Keele Campus. The data was collected by Myself as well as Katie, Ashley, Adam, and Ava on both days. On day 1, it was cloudy with sunny periods and about 16 C. We performed 30 quadrats in the woodlot and 30 in the grasslands in various parts within these areas. The quadrat was placed in a random area using a random number generator to calculate how many steps apart they would be. In order to be consistent, the same person took the steps for the entire collection on both days. The same steps above were done on day 2 as well with the 30 quadrats in the woodlot and grasslands of the Danby woodlot. There was a fairly constant precipitation throughtout the entire time on this day with a temperature of 15 C. Like it was stated before, a random number generator was used in order to calculate the number of steps in which we would take to ensure it was a completely random location to collected our data. We also used a scale for our plant abundance since this would be easier then counting individual plants. We however did not include dead plants or leaves as plant abundance as well as grass did not count as plant abundance. We only looked at living plants as well as trees as plant abundance.