Looking for a science activity to do with your kids? Do you have trees or shrubs with reachable branches? Participate in Caterpillars Count! to learn about:
- biodiversity
- insects and other arthropods
- food webs
- phenology (or the timing of seasonal events)
- climate change
- making and interpreting graphs
Lots of information can be found throughout our project website, and especially our Frequently Asked Questions page, but here's the quick summary of what you need to know.
Project Goal
Caterpillars and other bugs play an important role in ecosystems. Their abundance on vegetation varies geographically, across host plant species, and with the seasons. The data you collect can help document this variation by conducting weekly branch surveys throughout the spring and summer, and can also shed light on the impacts of climate change on trends in insect biomass and seasonal timing.
What is required to participate?
- At least 10 branches of woody vegetation at eye level or lower.
- A homemade beat sheet, instructions here. (Participants 12 and older may elect to do "visual surveys" that do not require a beat sheet, but beat sheets are more fun and don't require as much attention to detail!)
- Willingness to learn how to identify arthropod groups to order (i.e. beetle, fly, leafhopper, caterpillar, etc.). See our resources for learning identification skills.
- A phone or computer for submitting data.
How it works
- Create and verify a personal Caterpillars Count! account.
- Create an official Caterpillars Count! site at our website here.
- For the site name, choose something that is likely to be unique. "Hurlbert Backyard", "Riverview Drive Backyard", and "Fido's Amazing Backyard" are all probably okay, whereas "My backyard" is probably not.
- Select the number of branches you plan to survey at your site in multiples of 5, with a minimum of 10.
- If available branches are limiting, feel free to choose whatever is available. If you have lots of woody vegetation on your property to choose from, consider laying out your survey branches as suggested in the Setting up a New Site section of this page.
- Print branch tags unique to your site. Log in to the website and click on My Account > Manage My Sites > and click Print Tags.
- Tags can be "laminated" with clear packing tape, and then hung from their respective branches with twist ties.
- If you can identify the plant species for each branch, enter them first using My Account > Manage My Sites > Edit Survey Plants. Now the plant species name will appear on your printed tags!
- Learn to identify different bug groups using our identification sheet, the Arthropod Photo ID Quiz, and our Virtual Survey Game.
- Whack each branch over a beat sheet 10 times and see what bugs you find! See detailed protocol info here including this video demonstration.
- All branches should be surveyed on the same day.
- Try to conduct surveys once each week.
- If participants are 12 or older and you are unable to make a beat sheet, you can use the Visual Survey protocol (video here).
- Submit observations with our free Caterpillars Count! mobile app (iOS and Android), or record observations on a paper data sheet and submit later on the website.
- Take photos of what you find with the app and then follow up on id's through our iNaturalist integration.
- Check out the App User Guide here.
Learning activities and extras
- The data you collect (and indeed data from throughout the entire Caterpillars Count! project) can be explored and visualized on the Maps and Graphs page.
- Click on your site on the map to get a detailed summary of patterns of abundance, biomass, and composition.
- This document provides a detailed guide to the data visualizations available, and to the types of questions that can be answered.
- Our Resources page (go to "For Educators") has links to a variety of learning activities for different age groups.
- See this page for some ideas for other Side Projects that could be done in conjunction with Caterpillars Count! data collection.
Questions?
Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page, and if your question is not answered there, feel free to post a question on the Google Forum at the bottom of that page.
We hope you enjoy getting outside and discovering what kinds of bugs are common in your yard, and how their composition changes over the course of spring and summer!