Last Friday night, Mustard and I attended a BioBlitz at Morialta Conservation Park, run by the Discovery Circle. It was great fun! We set up a light trap to attract insects, and helped people collect and identify the critters that came to visit us.
A light trap is a white sheet hung between two trees, with a bright light strung up in front of it. The light we used was a mercury vapour light, which produces lots of the UV light that insects are attracted to. Exactly why insects are attracted to bright lights, such as your porch light at home during the evening, or our light trap, is not definitively known.
Theories include:
Whatever the reason, we had lots of tiny moths and flies come land on our sheet!
Theories include:
- The insects might use the moon to navigate by, and man-made lights confuse them
- A light source might be confused as a 'clear path', so insects are heading towards the light so to not bump into obstacles
- Perhaps insects are attracted to UV light because flowers also reflect UV light?
Whatever the reason, we had lots of tiny moths and flies come land on our sheet!
There were plenty of other things happening at the BioBlitz - spider surveys, bat surveys, spotlighting possums and birds, nocturnal ant hunting... it was fantastic to see so many families heading out around the park with scientists. Data from any identified animals and plants was uploaded to The Atlas of Living Australia, which is a great place to find out what lives around you! It is also a great site to upload anything you see (and know what it is). If you find something and want help getting it identified, head to BowerBird, where there is a great community of people uploading sightings to projects and helping each other identify things from photographs.
BioBlitz brought lots of great organisations together. There were even some educational displays about how feral animals (like cats and foxes) cause so much damage to our native wildlife. Mustard was not so keen on the taxidermy cat.
BioBlitz was a bunch of fun - thanks to the Discovery Circle for having us! There are more BioBlitzs coming up later in the year - find out more about them here, and head out to learn more about our amazing environment!