Week 3

This week I didn’t have any farm visits, so first I finished counting, taking pictures, and writing up the results of Friday’s John Bowne insect sampling. Here is a picture of my at home setup:

Clear plastic plate with an open petri dish, forceps, and yellow bowl for sorting insects

In the process I noticed the John Bowne traps caught a bunch of spiders, here are some pictures:

Large brown/black spider       Light brown smaller spider

Because of the evaporation of the pan traps at John Bowne last week, I discussed with Jane the grower about coming in this week or next week to redo them, but we were not able to find times that would fit with her schedule. So instead, we decided to keep the results we had, but noted water amount and heat for the next time we set the pan traps.

I also began making my poster this week. I first made an outline of the poster to plan and space out where I will place all my information. I then wrote the introduction and background of the project and added a case study section to discuss the specific farms I am sampling with pictures. I also starting experimenting with different ways of showing my results by playing around with graphs in Excel. Here is a picture of my first draft:

First draft of my poster with text and pictures

I also started a field guide for NYC growers to identify between common natural enemies, and organized it by the ones I had difficulty distinguishing. I added pictures I had taken of insects I found in the traps. I will continue to add to this as well as the poster this upcoming week.