This week was a pretty laid-back week! We mostly worked in the lab, but we also went back out the Zumwalt to pick up pitfalls.
On Monday, we just worked on more pinning. However on Tuesday, Sandy came to the lab and worked on bee identification with us! We had so much fun, and it was really fascinating to learn how to ID some of the most common bees that we collect. To identify bees, we use various keys that are made up of different pairs of statements (called couplets). Identification starts with Couplet 1, and we determine which of the two statements is true of the bee that we are looking at. After choosing the statement that is true of our bee, we are directed to another couplet. This continues until we reach a couplet that ends with a specific genus (some go to species, but the key we were using only went to genus). Since this was pretty much our first time (for Sam, Lauren, and Estany and I) identifying these types of bees, we were practicing using specimens from Sandy’s reference collection. Sandy would give us each a bee without the label, and we would try to key it out. If we got it wrong, Sandy went through the key with us backwards to figure out where we went wrong. It was a really fun experience, and I learned a lot about different characteristics and the anatomy of bees!
On Wednesday, Lauren and I went back out the Zumwalt just for the day to collect pitfalls. It was a little bit more of a hassle to hike to the upper plots this time. Instead of carrying all of our equipment with us, we decided to just put the pitfalls from each plot in three separate 2-gallon Ziploc bags, so that we could take them back to Summer Camp and process them there. So after lunch, we processed the three samples from the upper plots. Then on our way out of the preserve, we picked up the rest of the samples. It was extremely smoky again the whole time we were there, which made the hike a little unpleasant, but overall it was a pretty good day! And I fished for more grasshoppers on the way out again!
On Thursday and Friday, we were back in the lab. Lauren is going to be gone all of next week, so she showed me example of how to process pitfall traps (because we only have five pan trap samples left to pin!!!). I am also going to be working on creating an Excel database of all of the bees that we have collected. At this point, all we will be including in terms of ID of the bees is if they are Agapostemon (the green bees) or not. We all made bets about what percent of the bees we have collected are Agapostemon, and the prize for the closest guess is a free Blizzard from Dairy Queen!
