Insect Abundance affected by Light and Habitat at Stong Pond

This experiment took place at York University, Stong Pond on October 19th, 2015 between 3:00-5:00pm (ET), with temperature at 12˚C, partly cloudy and windy (8mph). The same experiment was repeated on October 26th, 2015 between 3:00-4:30pm (ET), with temperature at 10˚C, mostly cloudy and windy (6mph). In the experiment, 20 pans were filled with soapy water, 10 were placed in the grassland and 10 were placed in the woodlot. Using the distance measuring tape, the pans were each 2m apart from the previous placed pan and they were left in each habitat for approximately 1 hour. The colours of the pans were light blue, red, yellow, white and dark blue which were used to attract different types of insects. The canopy coverage was measured by making a square with average human sized fingers to estimate the tree coverage (in percent, %) proportional to the sky coverage above each replicate. Sharon Dhami helped to set up the pan trap on the grassland while Syed Yusuf and Sarah Alsammarraie set up the pan traps on the woodlot. This procedure was followed for both Day 1 and Day 2 experiments for both habitats.