Iona Academy Finally some sun Week one count

Iona Academy of Eastern Ontario:

Once again we set out to check how many insects we caught.  Today we are up to 30 insects, mostly flies and a few moths!! The weather has only been a high of 4 Degrees Celcius with a 40 percent chance of a mix of snow and rain. We are hoping to get better weather next week to continue to catch more insects with success!

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Updates from Landmark

April 23rd, 2015
The snow that we got the other day has all melted away and it is slowly starting to warm up. Hopefully that means that some insects come out soon! So far, our trap hasn’t caught any bugs. We’ve found that a few little pant seeds, and some specs of dirt floating around in the trap, but nothing to examine yet!!

-Olivia and Aliyah
Friday, April 24th
What’s up everyone! Landmark here. It’s been pretty chilly over here for the last few days, but at least all that nasty snow is gone. We’ve finally nabbed a few bugs in our trap – around 12 by my count. Two are small spiders, one is a female mosquito, and the others appear to be fruit flies. Not a terribly surprising count to be honest. Fruit flies often outnumber other insects here. Hopefully it warms up some so we can get more diversity!

– Tyra
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(end of week one)

Attn. Teachers! Trapping will be extended by one week (till May 8th)!

Dear Teachers,

Based on the collection reports, weather data/feedback that we have received from you over the past few days, the School Malaise Trap Program Team has decided to extend trapping by one week. This means that trapping will now officially conclude by noon, Friday, May 8th. With this extension comes greater pressure on BIO to process your specimens before the end of the school year so that you may receive your results. We will do our very best, however will require your utmost cooperation on the shipping front. As you will only be trapping till noon on Friday, May 8thwe will require you to package your trap up and arrange for a FedEx pickup that day. Your package must be sent out during the afternoon of Friday, May 8th! As some participants are in quite rural locations, you will need to drop off your package for shipment at the same location which you picked it up. Once again, package send-out must take place on Friday, May 8th. Further shipping instructions will be forwarded to you shortly.
Since most of you have collected very little over week one, we will be using the week 1 bottle to trap during the second weekCome Monday morning (April 27th), please reattach the week 1 bottle to the Malaise trap and remove it at the end of the day Friday, May 1st. Monday morning, May 4th, please attach the week 2 bottle and remove it by noon on Friday, May 8th in order to ship your package back to BIO in a timely manner.
Some of you have experienced some ethanol spillage from your week one bottle. As long as the ethanol is around the « 2 » level, you should be able to proceed with trapping. If your ethanol is lower than the « 2 » level, please bring it up to that level by pouring some ethanol from your week 2 bottle into the week 1 bottle.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns regarding trapping extension.
Furthermore, keep up the great blogging and twitter work. We are hoping that next week will bring warmer weather for all and we would like to hear how this affects collecting.
I look forward to hearing your classroom’s thoughts about trap extension. Please keep us updated!
– School Malaise Trap Program Team

The Malaise Trap Inspection.

On Thursday, April 23, 4m went down to our cleverly picked spot to inspect our Malaise trap. My inspection, as well as others, found nothing. But, other people said there were some bugs. My prediction to why not many bugs were spotted is the weather. We still have a fairly big snow mound, and the playground equipment was dewy, but our spot could have attracted flies and other mud-loving bugs. I did find that our spot as very wet.

Thank you.

By a student in 4m.

Bringing Biodiversity to Canada's Schoolyards