User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
For my project, I am sampling from three different sites that contain varying amounts of water, with the sites being a bird and wildlife sanctuary, a meadow and park, and a residential condo complex. I want to determine the insect abundance and species composition between the sites, and also explore the hypothesis that the amount of available water in a given area determines the density of individuals and the abundance of species. Insects were caught on sticky traps consisting of a thick paper card and double sided tape and then placed in individual plastic bags. Using a magnifying glass, the number of identifiable species were counted, and the total number of individuals was counted. Five sticky traps were placed in each location, at a variety of heights so as to account for both flying and crawling insects. The only trouble I had with implementing my sampling method was the worry, as all three locations were regularly visited by humans, that others would remove the cards. So far, this situation has not occurred. The data I collected was surprising only in that I thought more insects, in general, would be present on the traps. When collecting data again, I decided to use more heavy duty traps with stickier adhesive in order to account for insects that are stronger and able to escape the trap. I also decided to increase the time that the traps were left out from 24 hours to 72 hours (~ 3 days).
Interesting sampling strategy! I was wondering what would happen or how you would account for a card that was missing? Perhaps a citizen took one or altered your experiment design in some way, how would you make up for that lost data?
I also wonder if there is something in the trap or the design of the trap that attracts more/certain type of insects. That would be interesting to look at in the future?