Saturday, June 11, 2011

Field Season 2011

Field Season is upon us!  Well, upon me, and my team.  (I have a TEAM!)  So much is going on!

For this final round of insect collecting I'm looking at 50  (up from just 16 last year) different sites, some vacant lots, several different types of gardens, and sites in various Metroparks surrounding Cleveland.  I'm laying out 10 yellow pan traps, like last year, but oh, there's more.  I'll be putting blue and white pan traps out in addition to the yellow.  Blue traps attract more bees, white traps attract more flies, and yellow traps attract more wasps.

My TEAM consists of a group of undergraduate/post-baccalaureate/graduate students, and a few volunteers that aren't currently in school, and who have very little science experience.  Among the team we have two "plant people", one "bird person", three "bug people", one "map/rocks person", and several students that haven't found their focus.

We'll be doing insect collections next week, bird surveys in two weeks, and vegetation surveys and pitfall traps in three weeks.  (Holy data, batman!)

Wish me luck!