September 18th, 2016

Room 307 and 309 have been chosen host a Malaise Trap from the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (at the University of Guelph) on the Elizabeth Ziegler school grounds from September 19 – 30. A Malaise Trap is a tent-like device that collects insects in order to carry out biodiversity inventories.

 

The insects “bump” into the black mesh panel and move towards the lighter mesh to escape. At that point they encounter the collection bottle and become permanently trapped. The collection bottle will preserve the organisms and their DNA. It is this DNA that gets processed and coded by the Canadian Centre for DNA barcoding and later added to the Barcode of Life Data Systems. The students will be recording the temperature, cloud cover and volume each week day. Please feel free to check out the “Malaise Trap” on the EZ grounds – but don’t touch. We would like to gather the best data we can!

If you want to know more please feel free to ask a student in Room 307 or 309 or check out the program’s website:
www.malaiseprogram.ca