[:en]Even with below temperatures over the weekend, the weather has warmed up and we are catching insects!
We’ve got the kit!Malaise trap is all set up and we are ready to collect![:]
[:en]We are so surprised how few bugs we have caught so far! We predict that by the end of this week, the bugs won’t even reach halfway to the “1” on the scale. It was great to see the tent looking undisturbed and sturdy and we hope this keeps up for the rest of the project. Our group also noticed a number of bugs flying near the top of the tent, but not going into the bottle. We hope the number of bugs we catch starts to rapidly increase soon!
[:en]Wow, there are so many bugs! It is so cool how our Malaise trap can gather the bugs in such a scientific way. While we were observing the Malaise trap, we had the opportunity to observe a bug get trapped in the net and fly up to the container. We are ecstatic with how well the trap is working. We already have a catch volume of 0.25. We can’t wait to see what we will trap next!
The Biology 30 students at Dene High School (formally La Loche Community School) set up their insect trap in our Admin Assistant’s backyard on Friday. It is conveniently located right across the street from the school on the lake shore. We have had some pretty cool and rainy weather, but we are hoping that some insects make their way into the trap! Stay tuned for our week one results on Friday![:]
[:en]Below is a photo that we took on our way home from school. As you can see way off in the distance, part of the trap fell down in strong winds. Because we are collecting on a nature reserve, the tarp is behind locked gates and we won’t be able to fix it until the next morning.
Now, it’s the next morning and it’s raining. We’re in such a drought that we haven’t had rain in a long, long time and it picked a really bad time to come back. As soon as the reserve management says that we can go in, we bought new stakes to replace the aluminum ones and we’re sure that this will take care of our issue.
[:en]Our school has been preparing for this project for some time now. We have been working with an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside and a biology professor at Mt. San Jacinto College to learn to use the trap, sort the insects, ID the insects, and collect DNA from the insects since the beginning of the summer. This School Malaise Trap Collection will be one part of a bigger project for us that we hope to publish in a journal eventually.
We started blogging about our adventures on a separate blog site. As the project goes along, we will continue putting detailed blogs on the other site about our overall project and we’ll post updates about this specific part of the project on this blog.
[:en]When we went out to check the Malaise trap this afternoon, we discovered that the back part of the trap had caved in. It was a disappointment because there were few bugs in the ethanol bottle. We managed to fix the back part of the trap and hopefully in the days to come there will be more bugs caught.
Today we setup the School Malaise trap for the first time! The setup process was quick and easy, also almost instantly we caught an insect. During the setup we all took notes about the bugs, the trap and the weather. The trap is setup at Morning Star Middle School in the South corner of the field parallel to the fence. By the end of the setup we caught 3 bugs at 21°c with partial clouds. After we came back in we watched a live stream from the University of Guelph in which we learned more about DNA barcoding and got some questions answered. When we returned later in the day with the grade 6 Arts and Technology Program Students to give them a tour of the trap, the bottom of the bottle was covered with captured bugs, some other bugs such as wasp and mosquitos were flying in the bottle not yet caught. We hope that we continue collecting lots of insects and hopefully find an insect not yet DNA Barcoded![:]
What a great start! Within the first few hours, we have collected over 10 bugs in the trap! We witnessed a bug being lured in the ethanol bottle. Our trap is set up in a good location as it’s not affected too much by the weather. We are excited to see how many bugs will be caught in the next two weeks. -Erika, Carleigh and Jorja
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