Mountain Shadows Middle School students collected insects on September 27 and 28 in multiple locations on our campus. Following a discussion of the project and procedure, two classes of science students divided into 7 teams each and set out to see what they could find in their plots. Since our soil is very sandy and our climate, especially at that time, is very hot (we had many days over 100 degrees), we were not surprised that many of our insects were "hiding" in the afternoon heat. True to southern California, we found many ants, with gnats and flies (our community is home to dairy and chicken farms) coming in a close second and third. We were happy to find a few dragonflies and butterflies on our morning collection and one praying mantis each time. We discussed whether to leave the numbers intact from the ant count; there was comment that it skewed the numbers, but in the end the students decided to leave them in the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet Summary:

Period 5
9/28/2006 9:00
Type of Insect Totals
Rolly Poly 56
Cricket 1
Spiders 6
Beetles 5
PincherBug 4
Lizard 2
Flies 7
Gnats 40
Bee 3
PrayingMantis 1
Centipede 53
Ants 3
mystery bug
Team Totals 181

Period 2 9/27/06 11:00
Type of Insect
Rolly Poly 70
Cricket 70
Spiders 2
Beetles 0
Pincher Bug 4
Lizard 0
Flies 29
Gnats 32
Bee 10
Praying Mantis 1
Centipede 11
Ants 423
mystery bug 1
dragon fly 6
butterfly 0
moth 2
worm 1
Team Totals 690


Students were interested to see the vast difference in the collection site which Shotoku students visited; their lush forest is in great contrast to our stark desert setting. Their insects also seemed very exotic to our very common critters!