Golden Niche Documenting The Invertebrates Of New York City

I have been working on the website, along with patrick to make it presentable. There is now a header with clear categories for visitors to visit. I have also started adding our groups content onto it such as our documentary, pictures, and more. I reuploaded patrick’s videos to youtube to make it easier to view the vidoes and so they could be embedded. Patrick has started adding sections of the research paper.

At the moment it is good enough for a person to view, if they want to during our presentation at macaulay. It just needs some fine adjustments.

This week I went to Prospect Park. It was a pretty cold day, but I decided to try my luck. At first I searched around paths and places where people walked but quickly learned that that is not a good place to search for them. Next I went off paths, into places that most people don’t go. Things of interest were: dark colored soil, large dead logs, and areas that looked undisturbed. I also tried to dig up holes in some areas and look inside places that had holes. When I did find a good looking dead log, I tried to peel the bark and see if there were any invertebrates hiding inside. As a last resort I tried shaking logs to see if anything would scurry out.

Before I knew it, I realized I had dont a full circuit of the park via paths that people dont take. It was frustrating not finding anything, but I learned valuable information about invertebrates because of it. I learned later that during winter, many invertebrates go into hibernation, overwinter as larvae, nymphs, eggs, and pupae, and lastly migrate to other areas. Many burrow deep underground, further explaining why I couldn’t even see any.

The largest irony was in the fact that once I got home, I found at least 7 bites on my body, no doubt from the invertebrates playing hide and seek with me.

This week, my group and I formulated a plan  for accomplishing the tasks required to complete the project. We decided that over the weekend, we would go to Central Park to observe the invertebrate life we find there. We would photograph insects we find, as well as record videos of any invertebrates we find. This task might be tedious, considering the elusive behavior of insects along with their size.

During future weekends, I would personally visit Marine Park and collect data on invertebrates. In addition, we agreed that we should freely record any invertebrate findings we might make outside of our visits to these parks.

Prior to going, however, we need to research what kind of life the taxonomic group, “invertebrate,” refers to. I know that insects are part of this group, but considering the fact that invertebrates encompass a whole host of organisms besides insects (mollusks, crustaceans, arachnids, and worms), it would be wise to have an understanding of the taxonomy of invertebrates prior to going to Central Park.

This serves as a prime example of how things we do in our everyday lives contribute to everyday science learning. Even prior to embarking on data collection, I am already have a compulsion to gain a higher understanding of my subject.

After we collect data and record our observations, we will post our findings to iNaturalist and I’ll save the photos and videos for our documentary.

This week I created the group website. I made a silly mistake in the website title so I had to recreate it. So far I decided to go with a clean minimalistic theme so that the website looks appealing to people of all demographics and ages. It should be simple to use and navigate and I plan to structure it that way. I have also looked up how to embed youtube videos as I will need to do that for our documentary and other videos.

On Friday, Patrick and I visited Central Park for a few hours primarily to explore the invertebrate wildlife. It didn’t seem to be going well at first but once we lifted a piece a bark off a tree and found spider eggs, we knew there was still more to find. It then seemed like a better idea to go where there were less people setting up for the NYC Marathon. After circumnavigating part of the lake by Strawberry Fields, we decided to start digging in order to find bugs. We carried a few paper cups to catch them. The first thing we found was a sow bug, as Patrick had later found out, which looks like a pill bug. This first find seemed alone so we then moved to a different area and found that whenever we pushed aside enough leaves, we would spot a handful of bugs; either centipedes, worms, a lady bug more sow bugs etc. Patrick luckily agreed to take the creepy crawlers home, since my mom was not too happy to have those in the house.

My role for the group project will be to create the website and some other smaller roles in helping my team members, like proof-reading the final paper to make it cohesive. I will be responsible for making our website accessible to people of all kinds of technological proficiency, for making the website simple to use and move around, for making our work look attractive and professional (as it can be), and to make sure all our content is presented on their. I do not know how it will look yet, but I plan to make it uncluttered. There will possibly be a banner containing a wide shot of prospect park or central park.