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!
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.
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.
On September 22, we went to see our Malaise trap.The Malaise trap was smaller than I thought. When we went there, there were no insects in it.
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!
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!
-Minna
And we took another selfie for good measure – Mrs. G.
Today Emma, Meagan, and Paige checked the bug traps on the last day of the project! We found many bugs but unfortunately you can not see a lot of the bugs due to the piece of paper in the bottom. We enjoyed doing this project along with the University of Guelph, and hope they are successful with your research. We thank you for letting us be part of this experiment we really enjoyed it!
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.
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.
A day that’s good for bugs and insects is when the sun is out. Heres a picture of how the trap’s set up!
It’s set up in Miss Manicom’s back yard because it’s the same ecosystem as our school yard.
We are going back on Friday, October 3 to see the progress of the trap. It’s a 7:00 min. walk but we don’t mind because it’s fun walking there and back.We get to talk to our friends and look at nature. We normally go and visit the trap on Monday and Friday. Both of the classes go, one after each other.
We have a lady bug climbing up into the bottle of ethanol to be caught and given a DNA barcode.
We haven’t caught much but that’s ok.
