As spring arrives with warmer weather, field trips and outdoor activities are once again possible. Enhance and enrich your biology curriculum through hands-on activities with live specimens found in your own environment. A well planned field experience can significantly improve student understanding and information retention while they have fun learning.
When capturing insects and other invertebrates, it is best to use a variety of collecting tools and techniques to find quality specimens. A sweeping or beating net can be used to collect a variety of insects – many of which may have gone unnoticed before being dislodged from their hiding places by the sweeping technique. You can also set simple insect traps – cans or jars buried in the ground, level with the soil surface – to catch ground-dwelling insects and other small arthropods. A bait of rotting fruit or meat will attract more specimens. Use a trowel to dig into rotting logs or the soil itself to find insect larvae, nematodes, and earthworms. Collect leaf litter and bring it back to the lab, then use a berlese funnel to separate the many small organisms in the material. You can collect the specimens live, or preserve them in alcohol in the collecting jar below the funnel.
And, each field experience can later be brought into the classroom. The fun begins when you bring your “catches” back to the lab for observation. Once in the lab, terraria, plastic cages, “bug dorms” or simple containers like jars with perforated lids can be used to house insects, spiders, and similar organisms. Ward’s Ant Nest is ideal for ants, and when filled with damp soil could also house earthworms or nematodes. Use collected earthworms in conjunction with a composting kit to study how these annelids aid in recycling materials.
Your students can put the assorted specimens collected into a plastic terrarium for observation. Collect some plants or plant parts from where you used the sweeping net to provide food and cover for your insect “zoo”. Insects can be kept in this manner until the semester ends; at which time they can be released back into their natural environment.
Continue reading ‘Bring ‘Em Back Alive - An insect collecting resource’
