Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Wilson participating to the Ohio State University "Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz" of 2010

A few months ago I was searching some information on Organic Pest Control. One of the most important insects for agriculture available in nature to control unwanted pests are Ladybugs. And this is why Ladybug is the Ohio State Insect since 1975. 


Then I came across the "Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz"  a census program of Lady Beetles conducted by Ohio State University with the help of volunteers all over Ohio State.


I decided to participate to this program with our Wilson Garden so that some elementary kids could be able to be part of their first ever University scientific research and be proud of contributing to the study and protection of those cute red insects.


On the 13th of June we placed our sticky card on a post in the middle of Wilson Garden and waited 7 days.




On the 19th we collected our sticky card and studied the tiny world living in our garden.



The kids where fascinated on discovering how many little living beings are in the garden that they never noticed. And we did have 2, maybe 3 ladybugs. The kids learned that our beloved ladybug population is decreasing at an alarming rate and that we were helping scientists collecting data to understand why and find a solution. 




The sticky card with all the information was sent to the Ohio State University at the Agricultural Landscape Ecology (ALE) Lab. Our data will be part of a big pool of data that will allow scientist to help ladybugs and save our crops here in Ohio.


We will have another sampling at the end of August and then we will report the results of the research.

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