Category Archives: Elementary Schools

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Malaise Trap Walk

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We did the School Malaise Trap Program. I am telling you about my walk to the trap.  It was quick and there were a lot of leaves.

There were lots of homes; too many homes and they were big homes, almost too big. Miss Manicom’s backyard is where the trap was. We went through the the back and it was fun.

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After the walk, we saw the trap. It had no bugs when we put the bottle on but after a couple of days we had more bugs. We received two bottles, one for week one and one for week two. It has been 2 weeks already and we have sent the bottles back to BIO in Guelph. In a few weeks, we will see how many insects and how many different kinds of insects we caught.

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Final Count @ 40 For St. Ignatius

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The final count for St. Ignatius of Loyola for Week 2 reached about 40 insects (Level 1). Although our trap was taken down on Monday, we still have a few exciting reports: 1) a large dragonfly was the newest addition to our collection; 2) rabbit droppings were sighted beside the trap; 3) a black-and-orange caterpillar was seen on the trap; and 4) some white mushrooms are growing beside the trap… take a look!

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Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Insects for Us

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The Malaise trap program is fun because we can catch insects and they are an amazing species. On Friday Sept. 26 we took down the bottle for the week and we put up a brand new one. Ethanol is a poisonous liquid – really dangerous – don’t want to be around that stuff.

We all really want to catch a brand new insect!! I hope we get more insects than the first time.

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

ethanol and location

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We have been participating in the School Malaise Trap Program.

On Monday, September 22, we put the ethanol on the trap. (Don’t play with ethanol. It is very poisonous and flammable). We use ethanol because it preserves the bugs after they die in it. They die in the ethanol because it is poison. Again, ethanol is very poisonous.

The trap worked very well and we caught hundreds of tiny little insects. In our second week, we hope to catch more insects than before.

We decided to set up the trap at our teacher’s house so that it would not be disturbed. If it was disturbed, the specimens might fall out, the ethanol would spill, and some kids would get very sick from the ethanol on the ground, maybe even the fumes of ethanol could make them sick.

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Collection Completed!

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We really enjoyed this program. We especially enjoyed our second week. During the second week the sky was overcast and it rained periodically. During the second week we caught almost 3 times as much as during the first week. During the first week we only approached the first line of the bottle but during the second week we made it up to  almost the third line.  That helped us construct our own hypothesis about how the weather affects insect collection. We hope you enjoy our selfies and we look forward to the results!

 

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Taking trap down @ JackChambers

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Today we had to take our trap down today, in the rain…and the wind. The trap is wet so we have put it up in our class in order to let it dry over the weekend. Thank you so much for the bio bus tour! It was very interesting to hear the information that we did.. This was a great experience and it was a great way to introduce us to DNA barcoding! 🙂 On Monday, the trap will be sent back. We are very sad to see it go but are very excited to receive our results and see if we caught any new bugs!

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-Minna
And we took another selfie for good measure – Mrs. G.

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

How It Works

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The grade five students at Evergreen Elementary School of Drayton Valley, Alberta set up a Malaise trap in Mrs. Manicom’s backyard. I hope there will be at least 1 full mark of insects that flew into the ethanol by the end of the week. Ethanol is a type of alcohol that kills every insect that flies into it. After a week we take the bottle off and put a new one on. After two weeks we ship the bottles to the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (www.biodiversity.ca) in Guelph, Ontario. They will DNA barcode all of the insects that we caught. In November they will give us a report on what we caught. It would be cool if we caught a unnamed insect.

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

What We Caught

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On September 22nd Evergreen Elementary grade 5 started a Malaise Trap in our teacher’s backyard. The Malaise Trap hasn’t gotten very many bugs in there because we had a huge rain/thunder storm on Thursday, September 25th.

When we were at our Malaise we saw a wasp and hoped it would go in our Malaise Trap, but sadly it didn’t.  We got lots of other types of bugs, but not as much as we hoped. I thought it was pretty good for our first week.

When our teacher looked inside the bottle we actually caught 2 wasps, 1 lady bug, and a lot of mini bugs and some other bugs too! I think Malaise Trap is really interesting.

Sept 26 week 1 results (2)

Elementary Schools, Fall 2014

Epic Selfie @ Jack Chambers

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Today we showed a class of grade sixes and Kindergartens our Malaise Trap. They thought it was really cool! Also while another class was out they noticed that a spider has been stealing our bugs! It built a web right under where the bugs would fall into the ethanol, so instead they would get trapped, then dinner would be served for the spider!

– Alexandra

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