Archives par mot-clé : deployment

W.R. Best – Setting the Malaise Trap

Our class (Mr. Stormes’ Class) along with Mrs. Joslin’s Class set up a Malaise trap on Sept 22 in the farmer’s field just outside of Barrie, Ontario. Hopefully after two weeks we will have some new insects. The Malaise trap is designed to trap flying insects and after two weeks we send our results to the BIO lab for research. After a bit we will receive the info of if we discovered any new species. If not, we still get to see what we caught.

How the Malaise trap catches flying insects is simple. The insects will fly threw the trap that looks like a tent and avoid bars that look like obstacles to the insect, then it will go toward the sky and hit screening and go into the collecting bottle. We’re hoping to catch a lot of flying critters.

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Father Scollen’s Malaise Trap Up an Running!

Hi everybody!

This is the class 5/4D at Father Scollen reporting in.  Our trap is up and running as planned and we wanted to share our experiences so far.

Last week, before we set up the trap, everyone in our class wrote down five insects that they thought we might catch in our trap.  Mr. Drew (our teacher) made a Wordle out of it.  The larger words are words that came up the most in our estimates.  You can check out the wordle, as it is attached to this post!

On Monday, the students here in our district unfortunately had the day off, as it was a professional development day for teachers.  Because of this, our students didn’t get to see Mr. Drew fumble with all the poles and stakes while erecting our Malaise trap.  It was a two person job for us, as our grade 3 teacher assisted him (and probably did all the work).

On Tuesday, may of us noticed the trap was set up as we were walking to school.  The trap is located near the corner of the school and is visible from the sidewalk many of us take when we are walking to school.  It reminded a lot of us of a camping tent.  We had an awesome field trip that day in which we got to go to a real life wetland located right here in Calgary.  As a result of the field trip though, we didn’t really have the opportunity to go out and look at the trap closely during class hours.  Many of us did check it out for a closer look after school though.

Today (Wednesday) we finally were able to go out as a class to examine the trap, see how it works, as well as witness how many bugs we’ve captured in our bottle so far.  We were all pleased to see that there is already quite a few creepy crawlies in our collection bottle.  We estimated that there may be around 50-100 in there, but it is very difficult to tell.

We will be sure to check out the trap tomorrow around the same time to see how many more specimens have been caught and we’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Father Scollen 5/4D Over and Out!

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We got bugs!

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The Grade 9 Warriors:

We’ve been a bit skeptical if we would get any insects – it’s been quite cool and cloudy here, with chances of frost each night.  Only a few small insects on Day 1 – there seemed to be more insects inside than out.  But the sun is out today and the temperature has climbed….and we have bugs!  Not a lot – but we can definitely see some different species in the collection bottle.

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All systems are a GO at the The York School!

The goal of the Malaise trap is to investigate insects in the environment of our school’s yard. We are excited to study the bugs and compare them to other schools across the Nation using their DNA barcode. We hope to learn what species of insects live in this area compared to other schools.

The trap set up went well today at lunch time. The tent poles and mesh parts were set up with ease while we had to hammer the pegs into the tough ground to keep the strings tight and the tent sturdy.  We then put caution tape around the trap to protect the area. The location of the trap is next to the school’s turf and basketball net off to the side of the school yard.

We are super excited to see what we will collect – can’t wait till tomorrow!

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Written by: Amy & Anna (Grade 9 students)

First Day of Trap Deployment at Marchmont Public School!

Marchmont Public School 1st day of collection. What an awesome team!
Marchmont Public School 1st day of collection. What an awesome team!

Today was exciting for my ‘Bug Research Team’. We struggled setting up the trap as there was a broken frame. Nevertheless, we persevered, set the trap and fought off many primary students for entry into the area! Great day and excited anticipation for our ‘bug catch’ for tomorrow!

Trap up on Eastdale CI’s Rooftop Garden.

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After overcoming some issue with securing the Malaise Trap to our garden beds, students in Mr. Servos’ Environmental Science class got creative with some bags of compost and secured the Malaise trap on Friday. We were happy to see that despite some storms and high winds on the weekend the trap stayed up…well mostly! Some minor adjustments had to happen this morning before we could attach the collection bottle, but we are confident that our trap will now be able to handle the wind. We are pleased to announce that the first insects have been captured successfully! Good luck to all the other participating schools.

(Notice the CN tower in our photos?)