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.
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
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)!!!!!!!!!!!
The count is in the 30’s after a mid-week count yesterday at St. Ignatius of Loyola in Guelph. New additions include 2 ladybugs this time. We are happy to see some diversity! We are going to say goodbye to the trap tomorrow with the class by doing a photo shoot.
Bringing Biodiversity to Canada's Schoolyards
