Biol2050 Week 4 Lab PanTrap Species Abundance

Pan Trap Experiment Location: York University Dansby grasslands and woodlot, conducted on September 28th at 2:30pm on a moderately humid and moist day with a temperature of about 19 degrees celsius. Wind speeds estimated at around 10km/h. The dansby grasslands provide a suitable environment because they allow the experimenters to observe a variety of insect species in condensed sections of high grass surrounded by an abundance of plant life. The dansby woodlot of York university provides large canopy cover and many different tree species, which provides a diversity of insect species which reside just above and around the placed pan traps. We used two different types of environments to assess the abundance of flying insects in each area. Conducted with Ameena Mohammed, Hinal Patel, Keerthana Ledchumykanthan, Taylor Kerekes. The method we used to capture the insect species for examination was the pan trap method. The pan trap method is effective in establishing an estimation of the diversity of flying insects because of the variation of colours of the pan traps used, of which our bowls were blue, yellow, and white. This variance in colours allows for a variety of insects, including pollinators who are attracted to different colours, to be captured. The pan trap involves a shallow coloured plastic bowl filled halfway with soap and water, which is effective in attracting and capturing the flying insects because when they fly into the soapy water they are unable to escape. MetaData: Bowl Colour: we had a variety of 3 different colour bowls to attract different flying insects that have different preferences in colour attraction. The bowls were placed around a large tree in the middle of the grasslands because we believed this large tree attracted an abundance of flying insects We placed the bowls separately in 5m gaps from each other, starting with one colour, then a second coloured bowl, then a third coloured bowl and then continued to follow that pattern in a circle around the large tree. Our bowls went from yellow to white to blue, and our decision to space them relatively far apart was to span as large an area as possible with this technique. In the woodlot we alternated to a line pattern because the structure of the woodlot meant that a line formation made the bowls the most accessible, and also to ensure that we were placing the bowls on flat land. Our bowls were very shallow so to ensure the experiment was not altered by the absence of soapy water from spilling, we had to certify the bowls were placed on very flat land. Number of insects: We believed we would have more significant data for our number of insects but this variable had relatively low numbers for what we expected. We simply took the pan traps and emptied the bowls into a sieve, in which we are able to count the number of insects. Species Abundance: Much like the number of insects our species abundance was relatively low for what we expected. We hypothesized that with each bowl we would have many different insects from many different species. What we found was that species abundance was almost always in line with number of insects, meaning that in each bowl when we found multiple insects they were usually of the same species. It is possible that this was an effect of the species’ preference to specific colours and that coloured bowl seemed to attract all insects of the same species. Species abundance was observed by filtering the soapy water through the sieve and examining each of the individual insects and assessing which insects had all similar features along with the assistance of a taxonomic key if necessary.