Golden Niche Documenting The Invertebrates Of New York City

Our group met this past Sunday to collaborate all of our research for the paper and to discuss how the learning strands fit into our project. We bounced ideas off each other on how to create a museum exhibit to present the research we have done. Potential exhibit ideas include having a 2-hour, 4-part exhibit. Each will be a half-hour focusing on a different branch of invertebrates we have researched: insects, earthworms, spiders and pill bugs. Each part will have a lecture to introduce the focus of the exhibit followed by a free-roam period in which students would use worksheet questions to guide them through the exhibit. We will be able to use the worksheets as an assessment of what the students had learned. This idea seems promising and will likely be used in the research paper. Learning strands that apply to our exhibit ideas will be addressed in the research paper.

This week, I continued to focus on the co-authored research paper. The topics of our research has been narrowed down to include earthworms, spiders, insects and pill bugs along with relevant related species that are in the same classes and phylums.

Patrick and I had discussed with Artur (video-captain) what our documentary will look like. We want to have an interview with Jay Holmes, the Citizen Science advocate that spoke in our class. We’ll use bits of the interview in the video.

This week, we have begun to discuss the co-authored research paper. We mapped out the sections that are required for the paper and discussed how to acquire that information. We took out a few textbooks from the Brooklyn College library. The books seem to include most of the relevant information needed.

The group is planning to either go to Central Park or Prospect Park in order to find and photograph invertebrates to research. Timing is crucial since it is getting colder and more bugs are hiding away for the winter. This prompted the question of where bugs go in the winter. The answer I found on Google indicated that some migrate like birds while some hide out either in an immature form (pupae, larvae, etc.) or in an active form.

After creating an iNaturalist account, I realized the website needs to be explored further. In addition to being able to upload pictures, I can also see other peoples’ contributions to the website. However, I’d need to really figure out how to navigate the website, which has proved to be a challenge so far. I have found a way to view the some different species found in Central Park among other areas. The page I have found wants to say that only 84 observations were made in Central Park. More work to be done…