Take a look at how the BIObus crew sets up a site for Standardized Sampling! This was taken at a rainforest site in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve in 2014. Watch Kate, Joey, Graham, and Danielle deploy a Malaise trap, flight intercept trap, pan traps, and pitfall traps before finally sweep netting the area for 5 minutes and settling down to aspirate all the insects.
Tag Archives: Malaise trap
ethanol and location
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.
Last day of bug trap!
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!
How It Works
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.
St. Paul’s Malaise Trap
This is our blog update on our Malaise trap. Our catch volume is about 3 and we are on week 2. It was a bit cold when we checked the trap. Our trap will be picked up on Friday.
Blog you later alligator (ha ha)!!!!!!!!!!!
2nd Week of Collecting Specimens
It has definitely been a different week than last week for collecting specimens.. overall much cooler and certainly much soggier!
J. F. Ross students in periods 1, 3 and 4 have been collecting their data on a daily basis, Mr. Neerhof’s class visited with Dr. Steinke during the virtual BioBus tour.
Students have enjoyed visiting the trap each day, and have incorporated this hands-on study into their ecology unit.
Activities and discussions around biodiversity, ecosystem sustainability and carrying capacity have stemmed from the experience.
Thanks so much from all of the Ross students!
SCC #SMTPSELFIE
Today Emma, Meagan, and Paige checked the insect trap. We discovered 8 bugs. There were 5 mosquitoes, 1 crane fly, and 1 horse fly. It was very cloudy and humid outside. We finally got to check the trap because the clown boys always beat us to it when asking to check the trap!
St. Paul’s Malaise Trap
Hello BIO! We were late on yesterday’s blog but this is a catch up. The catch volume so far this week is at about 2 it’s going at about the same pace as last weeks catch volume. Today is a very wet day so that hopefully will bring in a new species of insect! We will update you tomorrow on how it is going.
This blog was written by Daniel & Liam
Flickr Creative Commons
Brantford Collegiate Institute #SMTPselfie
Brantford Collegiate Institute’s grade 9 science class’ #SMTPselfie! Great picture!
Friday Report
We put our Malaise trap up on Monday, September 22. The insects will fly right up to the top of the trap and there is a hole at the top and the bottle is attached to the hole.
There is ethanol in this bottle so the insects get trapped in the bottle and die.
On Friday, September 26, we took it down to see how many insects we have caught.
The ethanol in the bottle, believe it or not, actually changed colours!!! It was sort of a brownish colour instead of being clear. Most of the bugs were dead at the bottom of the bottle along with some floating insects. The floating insects looked like they were swimming. I think it’s because they just got in the bottle over night so they are probably just making their way down.
Today, September 29, we went back to the location where we have set up the Malaise Trap. Because the cloud coverage was only about 3%, I thought we wouldn’t catch many bugs. Usually there are insects flying in my face every day. But today there were no insects in the air. That’s why I predicted we wouldn’t catch lots of insects today! We found 2 ladybugs around the tent though, so maybe we will catch some crawling critters, such as: ladybugs, spiders, or maybe even beetles. Because those bugs can crawl up the net right into the bottle, as they look for shelter when the weather is rainy.