Cheska Hrupcin, Entomology Research with the Brosi Lab at RMBL(Crested Butte), Week 3

Hello again! It has been another great week in Crested Butte working with the Brosi lab!

This week was jam-packed with long, hot, days working in the field. Three of them were spent working on our usual procedure of setting up cameras, bags, and our tent. The “thunderdome” is used to increase pollination events by forcing a higher concentration of insects.

I was also given a lesson on how to use R, which is a coding language and environment that is used for statistical computing. This program is often used in STEM so it was great to be able to learn the basics on how it works!         .          

Unfortunately, on our fourth day, Chris (my mentor) realized that our cameras were not recording as much as we thought they were. It turns out there was a bug where the cameras would shut off for about a minute while data was being processed. So Chris spent that whole day rewriting the code for the cameras and fixed the issue. This does mean that our past data may be unusable, but there is a possibility that we will be able to salvage it using a prediction method.

So while Chris worked on the cameras, I went to work with the other Brosi team on sampling data. So we walked to the Gothic Townsite and got a randomized assignment sheet and went to work on the different segments of the site. There are two different methods of sampling sweep and network. Sweep is where you take a large net and swat the air above the plot three times to try and catch what’s in the air. You then place your head inside of the net and catch each insect inside a vile filled with ethyl acetate (which basically gasses them out). With the network, you go to the plot and segment and use a stopwatch to sit on each side of the segment for one minute and 30 seconds. If anything lands on a flower you stop the timer, catch it, and label the vile. It is extremely important to be very careful when labeling vials so that no data is mixed up or lost. The labeling process is fairly similar for sweep and networking but with networking, you just have to label what plant they landed on. After about four hours we headed back to the lab and begin to ID our insects and place them in tubes of ethanol to be centrifuged (a process used to separate contents based on density, in this case, pollen!) This took a couple of hours to finish, but it was great to talk and get to know everyone!

On Friday we had a lab day. Chris explained to us how he fixed the cameras and we discussed how the ordering system of different species worked. I then got to meet Berry Brosi, who will be helping us with our project next week!

This weekend I got to spend some time in town, visiting numerous shops including the book and thrift store, and the tea house! I then got to take two more yoga classes and take a great hike up to Long Lake. Then the whole lab met up at Secret Stash restaurant for dinner. Thanks so much for another great week, can’t wait to start the next one!