We had a blustery start today with winds of about 30 km/h gusting up to 40 km/h. It was a cool 13 C and we were under thick cloud cover until after school let out. The Malaise Trap held strong all day and did not require any adjustments during the afternoon check-in It looks like we already have about half a dozen species of insects in the trap!
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Up and Ready!
On Friday, September 18th, we ventured up to Annie Laurie Lake and we found a perfect spot to set up our Malaise Trap (minus the collection bottle).
We couldn’t resist the opportunity for a class selfie!
We also spent some time in our Biology 30 class developing some questions for this field experiment:
- What species of Class Insecta are present in Preeceville (Annie Laurie Lake)?
- What is the representation of species (i.e. order, family) found in Preeceville (Annie Laurie Lake)?
- Are there species which are indigenous to our area and not found at any of the other collections sites?
- What information will DNA barcoding reveal about genetic relationships among the species found in our area?
On Monday morning, Miss Paterson will be placing the collection bottle on the Malaise Trap and she will check it through the week (although we are all probably going to be stopping by at some point to take a peek). We are excited to see what we catch!
Happy trappings!
T Minus 6 Days – Preeceville School’s Biology 30 Checking In!
Hello everyone!
Ever since our Malaise trap parcel arrived on September 9th, we have been really excited to start this project!
This week (September 14-17th), we have been learning about scientific classification of living beings in Biology 30 so that we can classify some of the critters that we catch during our time with this project.
Preeceville is located in east central Saskatchewan, one hour north of Yorkton (hello M.C. Knoll!!). We are very fortunate to be in an area that is very biologically diverse. Our town is in a parkland transition between the boreal forest and the prairie. Our nearby lakes are “pit stops” for many migratory bird species.
We are planning to deploy our Malaise trap on the southern shore of Annie Laurie Lake near the bird trails and beach which are marked in light yellow on the map below. This is about a ten minute walk from our school.
Permission has been received by our town to place the trap on town land. We will be choosing a place off the trails in the bush so that it is out of the way.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this project! We are looking forward to having the chance to contribute and learn from this process.