Kids science book
February 15, 2010
Hello, I’m writing a couple of science books for children but the publishers want them to be international. One of the experiments is about garden science and looking at what bugs you can find in your soil, through a funnel shining a light on top. I need to come up with a list of international bugs and wondered if you could help? Many thanks indeed,
Lisa
International!
Hi Lisa,
Please describe the experiment more thoroughly as it doesn’t make sense to us how the funnel and light are used. One international subterranean dweller is a Mole Cricket, but we are uncertain how your trap would work in finding the mole cricket. It would be much easier if we just provided you with a list of potential soil dwellers.
Daniel
Thanks so much for getting back to me! It’s like a Berlese funnel experiment. A list of potential soil dwellers would be absolutely perfect! And if you happened to know which were most widespread, all the better, but I realise that is very hard to ascertain sometimes,
All my very best wishes,
Lisa
Comment from Australia
Hi guys,
Congratulations on being near the end with the book project. … As an aside, I noticed the letter about the light and the funnel. One method of trapping insects is to bury a bottle with a funnel so that the lip of the funnel is at ground level. A light is suspended above it and ground dwellers walk to the light and fall into the funnel. Hope that sheds some light on it 🙂
aussietrev
I’ve heard of this type of trap. It works something like this: you fill up a funnel with soil and put it under a strong light. Soil-dwelling critters tend to be negatively phototactic, so the light forces them down through the soil. Eventually, they come out the bottom of the funnel, where they can be collected. It works best with small organisms that are not easily seen by digging through the soil by hand.