Hello All,
This week, BIO has been hosting live virtual tours of our BIObus (our field research vehicle). During these tours students have been learning about different insect trapping methods, insect orders, and have had the chance to interact with our expert!
Can you name the insect trapping methods pictured below?
BIO has also been collecting specimens this week. Check out our week 2 bottle below!
Happy Collecting!
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.
Hello BIO friends! Geramy, Liam, and David here with an update on our Malaise Trap. Our catch volume for week 1 is near level 3. Since we have set up the Malaise Trap on Monday, we have checked the catch volume and the weather every single day. On Monday our class is going to virtually meet a biologist, who works on the BIObus. Our class is very excited about week 2!
As we look forward to the Fall 2014 School Malaise Trap Program, we find ourselves reflecting upon how it all began. The SMTP website was in its infancy, and certainly didn’t include any sort of blog, but our friends at the BIObus were excited to share some thoughts about the birth of this program.
Here’s the first blog post related to the School Malaise Trap Program, copied from the BIObus site:
students,Starting tomorrow — Feb. 26, 2013 — the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO) will team up with grade 6 and grade 12 students from 60 schools to explore the insect diversity in their schoolyards through DNA barcoding, a genetic technique for identifying organisms. Using a Malaise trap — a small tent-like apparatus for collecting insects — each school will collect hundreds of insect specimens.
Each school will be visited by the BIObus, BIO’s mobile field laboratory, to introduce students to the life of a biologist and DNA barcoding. A comprehensive lesson plan accompanies the project and addresses specific expectations in the grades 6 and 12 curricula.
Once each class has deployed their Malaise trap for two weeks in April 2013, the samples will be analyzed at BIO and each class will receive a report providing a summary of the insects collected at each school. It will highlight new discoveries, and make comparisons between schools and nearby National Parks.
Stay tuned for many more updates over the next several weeks. Check here on the BIObus blog, but also:
The School Malaise Trap website
The BIObus Facebook page
The BIObus twitter feed: @BIObus_Canada
The DNA Barcoding blog
