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RESEARCH 

These are the results of our research.

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1. Catching insects from the air with a net

2. Catching insect by placing a umbrella under the  bush and shake the bush

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As we started our research, we first went to the locations, where we would then catch the insects. We have caught them in four different ways:

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  1.  If there were insects in the air, we would chase them with a net.

  2. When you were to find a bush, you would catch them by placing an umbrella under it and then shake the bush. As another variant, we would have a tube with a net on its end, so we could suck the insects into the net.

  3. We would catch insects in the ground by taking a soil sample and putting that sample into a tulgren funnel over an erlemeyer flask, in which the ethanol was, and then exposing the soil to sunlight for a week, so the insects would fall into the ethanol.

  4.  For the insects living on the ground, we placed a little pitfall trap, again with ethanol in it, and let it stay for a week.

  5. Once in the classroom, we first classified the north slope and then the south slope.  With the help of the book: “Bestimmung wirbelloser Tiere”, an optical microscope, stainless tweezers, a glass pipette, liquid ethanol, and a storage slide we were able to categorize the various classes of insects present in the Chur area.

 
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3. Taking a soil sample and drop them through a funnel into the ethanol

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4. Catching the insects on the ground with a little pitfall trap with ethanol in it

"If all of humanity were to disappear, the world would return and regenerate itself to the deep state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
If the insects were to disappear, the environment would collapse into chaos"
(Edward O. Wilson)

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1.

Average:

North = 18.28°C

South = 18.74°C

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3.

Average:

North = 53.62lux

South = 1990.34lux

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2.

Average:

North = 71.99%

South = 70.41%

1. The temperature of the two locations; in the south slope the temperature is every day about 1 or 2 degrees higher as the temperature in the north slope. Overall the temperature is every day around 15 -20 degrees. The 26th August is the overall hottest day.

2. The humidity of the two locations; in the humidity the north slope is every day a little bit higher. At the 26th August the humidity was around 55%, but at the other days the humidity was every day over 60%. At the 31th Augst it reached on the north slope nearly 80%. Which is really high, it could be that the humidity on the ground, where the sensor was, was a little bit higher.

3. The Insolation on the two slopes; it shows how high the insolation of the two slopes was. There is a big difference between the two locations. On the 26th. of August, there was a difference of about 3000 lux. The average difference of the two slopes also is about 1935 lux. We don't know why the difference is such high, it could be that the sensor of the south slope faced directly sun and the sensor of the north slope not. But we can say that beside this fact, there is still a pretty high difference. 

These Tables show the physical properties of each research location

From this diagram about the physical properties, we can see:

The two locations from where we collected the data about the physical properties were close to each other, and the only difference was the slope orientation. But as you can see there still are some major  differences.

If we look at the second graph, we can see that the humidity in the north slope is, compared to the humidity of the south slope,  a slight bit higher every day. And because of this, the average humidity in the north slope is higher (North = 71.99% and South = 70.41%). But the temperature of the north slope every day is a tiny bit lower. As you can see, the difference in Average Temperature of the slopes is quite small (North = 18.28°C and South = 18.74°C). The difference may be negligible for us but it may have large effect on nature. In the third graph, we can recognize the biggest difference  between the two slopes. We don’t know why the difference is so extreme. It could be that the sensor on the south slope is directly facing the sun , while the sensor on the north slope is not. But one thing is sure, the Insolation in the south slope is much higher than the Insolation in the north slope. On the 26th. of August, there was a difference of about 3000 lux. The average difference of the two slopes also is about 1935 lux.

Overall, we can conclude, that the first day was a nice warm day without clouds. And the other six days weren't too nice days and hadn't had  the highest temperature and also may had some rain, because of the higher humidity and the lower Insolation.

Insects with holomethabolic development, north slope

Insects with holomethabolic development, south slope

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2. Total numbers of Insects, in this pie chart you can see how many insects we totally found. On the south slope we found completely 345 insects and on the north slope only 256. Overall we found 601 insects on both slopes.

These Tables show the numbers of the Insects at the north and south slope

Insects with hemimetabolic development are insects, that are having incomplete metamorphosis, or a gradual change in body form with each molt, and wings developing externally.

Insects with holometabolic development are insects, with a complete metamorphosis. They are goning through 4 stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult.

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1. Number of insects, in this table you can see how many insects we found on the two slopes. As you can see, there is a realy big difference in the numbers of insects found. For examples we found 120 Formicidae, but zero Isoptera. Or of some spieces we found no one in both slopes.

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Insects with hemimethabolic development, north slope

Insects with hemimethabolic development, south slope

Comparison of the two slopes in turns of frequency of different species

Here we compared the data from the north and south sides and that`s what came out:​


Dragonflies, mantis', termites and beak kerfe, Those were the only species we didn`t find on the slopes. Just as we said before, the dragonflies are on the red list. Just because we didn`t find those three species (mantis, termites and beak kerfe) doesnt mean that there are none. 

 

The most common found species on the south slope are ants and the second most common found species are dipterous insects.

The most found insect on the north slope is the same as the second most found insect on the south, it is the species dipterous insect.

A big difference between the numbers of the found insects from the north and south slope can you see at the bug, blue bottle, ants and dipterous insects.

There are no insects of which exactly the same number were found on both slopes, but there are inects with a small difference. These are mayflies, soneflies, louse, cicadas, hymenoptera and butterflies

Discussion 

Interpretation

When we look at the results we notice that the differences in the numbers aren’t that helpful. The numbers of our research are way too small to be meaningful. But when we take a closer look, we notice that there are some differences in terms of the south and north slope with the numbers of the insect orders of cockroaches, grasshoppers, chinch bugs, bluebottles and ants. All the insect orders listed above are more often found on the north slope, except the ants, which apparently prefer the south slope. This could be related to the difference in temperature or insolation.

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Critical questioning

It is possible that the results aren’t really help- or truthful, because the numbers of our research are so small that they could have been influenced by so many factors. Let’s say that we found a colony of cockroaches on the south slope with 50 cockroaches in it. Maybe there was also a colony on the north slope, but we didn’t discover it. Our point is that we shouldn’t suppose that cockroaches prefer the south slope just because our small number of data showed us that.

Next time we should spend more time with catching insects, because normally you have thousands of insects and not just hundreds that you caught on two days with some traps. And also we should go to more different places that our collectet data can be more precise. All we want to say with this is that just because these are our results doesn’t have to mean they are true.

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Conclusion

To catch up on the interpretation that ants prefer the south slope; Both slopes got almost the same temperature every day. There are only differences between 2-4°C. So the insolation probably is decisive, because here we can see that the south slope got much more insolation than the north slope. In conclusion we can say that ants prefer to live in an area where there is a high insolation. The others (cockroaches, grasshoppers, chinch bugs and bluebottles) prefer, according to our project, the north slope with little insolation.

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Our project referring to the article "Insekten in der Schweiz"

Those papers say that the decline of the insects can no longer be stopped because their research showed that from the 1153 insects they've analysed 43% are endangerd, 16% potentially endangerd and only 41% aren't threatened. The whole process of the disappearance started many years ago when the insect's habitat was getting smaller because humans rearranged the creeks of streams and rivers and the agriculture changed drastically. Now on top of that the insects area challanged by light pollution, more pestizides and the worst of all climat change.

With that extra information we came up with some hypothesises.

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Hypothesis, what could the future look like?

Our prediction is hat the insects that are dependent on a water source will go instinct first. That assumption is justified by the facts that because of the climate change we have extremely hot summers where a lot of water bodies dry out. The worst is that they’ve built walls at the creeks from a lot of streams, so all the plants near the water are gone and especially those plants are an important habitat for a lot of wildlife.

We also analysed the fact that there are way more ants at the south slope than on the northern one. First we thought that it might just be coincidental and it just happened that we crossed a colony of ants on the south slope. But when you think about it more deeply you my find that there is a high occurrence of ants on the south slope because they prefer warmer and dryer areas. Or maybe they can’t deal with constantly wet areas because of their body structure or they need warmer and dryer areas to reproduce.

Overall insects are extremely important for a healthy biodiversity. If all the insects would go instinct, the whole system of nature would break together.

Therefore we have a few tips and tricks for you to help us maintaining a healthy population of insects.

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Our suggestions to each and everyone of you are:

  • Plant some more trees and bushes and don’t cut them down when you don’t have to. Those plants are a great habitat for the insects.

  • Plant flowerbeds on different spots in the city. Just a few more flowers spread around the town can help to maintain the variety insect populations.

  • Try to create some ponds around the city. There are many insects like the dragonfly who are dependent on humid environments. Because of the climate change the ponds dry out and the habitats of these insects disappear.

  • Build some insect houses for your garden or balcony or you can attach them to trees which stand in the city so that the insects have a safe place to return to.

  • If you have a garden, try to keep it unkempt. Don’t mow the grass each week, let it grow to ten or even fifteen centimetres and leave all flowers that way arises a more natural habitat for the insects.

  • Don’t use any pesticides for your plants, they bear a great responsibility for the insect decline. Try to keep everything organic!

  • If you have enough space, you could create a compost. A compost is environmentally friendly and insects will be thankful to use it as a living space.

  • Even on the smallest balcony you can put some flowerpots where you can plant different flowers or fruits and vegetables. Then you create a new home for many insects!

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Have our expectations been fulfilled?

Yes, we’ve learned very much about the process of catching insects and their classification. Even though we didn't catch a big amount of insects we had success by getting a great variety of them. We also learned how to evaluate data which is very useful. The study will be continued with other classes. Even if the data now is a bit lacking in points of quantity and credibility, there will be provided some helpful data in a few years.

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Suggestions for the next generation

For the next generation we suggest that they should spend more time with catching insects and go to more different places, so they will get more useful data and meaningful results. And maybe it could be worth a try during other seasons to operate catches. What will probably also make it a bit easier is that they can continue to use our data.

It would be great too, if they coud aslo work on some of the points listed above to create a better habitiat for insects.

Source: Insekten in der Schweiz

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