Phoenix+Staten+Action+Plan+Insect+Investigation

On Sunday, April 29th I went to the Insect Investigation hunt which was a part of the City Nature Challenge that encouraged us to take a deeper look at the insects around us and be able to label and appropriately name them. During this investigation, I came across different insects that I would generally name as the same thing but they're really not the same thing. I would call all butterflies Monarch butterflies but during this investigation we found butterflies that have similar patterns as monarchs, such as a butterflies in the Nymphalidae family. Doing a little more research, butterflies from the same family look extremely similar, which is why monarchs are generalized as the name of many different butterflies. There's a family called the Pieridae that is filled with yellow and circular patterned butterflies. On this challenge, we were able to take a deeper look into an ants home (an anthill) and dragon flies around the pond that I went to the day before and the was able to see its development and how they are differentiated from larvae to adulthood.

We also looked at trees and in this photo I am holding a dead beetle!