The question that this group focussed on is, How does the amount of flowering plants in a prairie affect the number of insects that inhabit it?
Our group includes Gage Monse and Otto Allen. Gage is the visual director, which does the designing of the website and is responsible for taking pictures while in the field and creating properly formatted graphs. Otto is the editor, which is responsible for writing the final text for this website and making sure everything is in order and organized.
Our group’s question was “How do grasses attract insects compared to flowers?” Each plot of the land in the prairie has one of three treatments than the one next to it. These treatments are seeded grasses only, Grasses & forbs, Grasses & 2x forbs. If you don't, forbs are also known as flowers. So we thought it would be interesting to tell the difference between the insects in all the different types of fields. The prairie is a complex ecosystem with a rich assortment of organisms adapted to abundant sunlight and wide, seasonal fluctuations in temperature and precipitation (Lawrence Free State High School, n.d.).
To catch the insects we used sticky traps. We placed three sticky traps in three plots - plots 6, 12, and 18. These are the three plots on the North side of the prairie. We chose these plots because each of them had a different treatment. Plot 6 was seeded grasses only, plot 12 was seeded with grasses and forbs, and plot 18 was seeded with grasses and 2X forbs. Each plot is sectioned into four smaller sections, labeled A, B, C, and D. Within each plot we placed the sticky traps in A, B, and D. There are poles marking each smaller section, and we placed the sticky trap on or beside these poles, approximately 2 inches off the ground. The sticky traps were two-sided, so one side was stuck to the pole, and the other was out to catch bugs.
We visited the prairie on Tuesday, October 5, Thursday, October 7th, and Friday, October 8th. On the 5th we placed traps, and we collected this set of traps on the 7th, and also placed new traps in the same locations. On the 8th we collected the second batch of traps. When traps were collected, we wrapped them in saran wrap to count the bugs and cover the sticky parts of the trap. We counted the bugs by physically looking at the traps and counting them. Leaves, debris, and dirt were not counted - only insects were.
The first set of traps had more insects on them because they were out for longer than the second set of traps. Plot 12 had the most insects (261 compared to 175 and 171), while plots 6 and 18 had a similar amount of insects (175 and 171). The second set of traps were only set out for one day and had fewer insects than the first set. When the first batch of traps was out, it rained, but when the second batch of traps was out it did not. The traps on the second day caught a more similar amount of insects - 72, 73, and 75 insects for plots 6, 12, and 18.
You will notice that the day 1 and 2 graph has a significantly higher insect count, that is because the sticky traps we used to catch the insects were out in the prairie for a day longer than the one on day 3.
Based on our data, we can estimate that plot 12 attracts the most insects of the three plots we tested. In the first set of traps, plot 12 had a much higher number of insects than the other traps. There are some factors that could have caused this difference in the data, the first one being the plot treatments. Plot 6 is seeded without any Forbes, while plot 18 has double the Forbes. Plot 12 may have attracted the most insects; it is a “middle ground” of the plots we tested - not too many Forbes, not too few Forbes. The number of Forbes may influence the number of insects because of how the different types of insects use the species. Some insects might use the various plants for shelter, food, or pollen.
Some sources of error or inaccuracy in our project might be the weather. The rain that occurred on October 6th could have affected our data by causing more insects to be attracted to the traps. It did not rain between the 7th and 8th. Another factor that could have affected our data was the time of year. If you were to do this experiment in the Spring, there would likely be a lot more insects caught in the traps because different flowers and grasses might have been blooming at that time.
We have two replicates for our experiment, although the first set of traps were set out for two days because of when our class periods were scheduled to meet. Ideally, we would have left the traps out for the same amount of time. We only conducted this experiment in three of the 18 plots on the prairie.
We would have to do this experiment over a longer period of time to get a more complete answer to our question. Only two sets of traps during one week were not enough data to fully draw conclusions from. Collecting data over a longer period of time would give us more data about how the insects are attracted to the grasses and forbs in the plots. If given more time, we would also use the whole prairie for data instead of just the three plots at the North end of the field.
Lawrence Free State High School. (n.d.). Tallgrass Prairie. Free State Prairie. Retrieved October 29th, 2021, from https://freestateprairie.wixsite.com/mysite/ecology