Insect investigation

While the rest of her lab group hangs back, junior Victoria Hernandez examines a paper plate. Yesterday, AP Environmental Science students set paper plates containing a mixture of cat food and honey around the school; today they checked back to see how many different species of bugs the plates attracted. “Besides the smell, it was interesting and I would expect that there were more species of insects at the school but basically we only saw ants and flies,” Hernandez said. Originally the students were going to mathematically calculate the school’s biodiversity index, but due to the extremely low diversity–only a couple of species were observed–they discussed the outcome instead.