Millman et al. 2023. Insect biodiversity varies across areas of differing levels of human disturbance at SUNY Purchase College
By Alyssa Millman, Rebecca Kleinman, Joshua Ladero, David Einhorn
Abstract
Human disturbances can have negative impacts on an ecosystem. We set out insect traps on three sites with varying levels of human activity on the SUNY Purchase College campus to study the relationship between human disturbance and insect biodiversity, as well as compare the effectiveness of three different insect traps. Through calculating the Shannon Diversity Index of each of the sites, it was found that areas with higher levels of human disturbance had higher Shannon Diversity Indexes. This correlation could be a product of variables that we failed to consider, such as the high prevalence of food and sugar in areas that are more populated by humans.