How diverse is our school’s biological community?
This year we participated in the School Malaise Trap Program hosted by Biodiversity Institute of ON. I first learned about this program at STAO in 2014 and was so excited to be a part of it this year. It fit in nicely with our theme of citizen science in grade 9. The program allows students to become part of the broader scientific community by conducting authentic inquiry. The program sent us a malaise trap in order to collect samples of insects in our yard. We then sent the samples back to the Biodiversity Institute where they were DNA barcoded. Our results indicated that despite our urban school setting, the insect community was more diverse than expected! Our trap collected a total of 101 specimens in week 1 and 118 specimens in week 2. Within the sample, there were 72 species, which ranked our sample 36 out of 64 for species diversity. The species collected came from several different groups and 13 species were only collected in our trap. We also collected one species of hymenoptera that was NEW to the Barcode Of Life Database! Amazing! I will definitely sign up for this program again - as soon as our renovations are done and we have our green space back!