This Year’s trip: 2018
This year the Collections Team will be performing a bio-inventory survey of Southern Ontario with Malaise Traps. We will be setting up 56 malaise traps in the Mixedwood Plains Ecozone. The BIObus will be at a few events this year. Come see us at the annual Rotary Forest Guelph Tree Planting on April 21st at Guelph Lake Conservation Area. We will also be participating again in Guelph Bug Day in late August!
Past Trips: 2017
Celebrate Canada’s 150 anniversary with us as we share images, fun facts, and DNA barcodes for 150 of Canada’s organisms. You can follow along at our blog, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
This year you will find the BIObus at the Guelph Rotary Forest Planting Event on April 22nd hosted at Guelph Lake Conservation Area. Try out a bioblitz this summer! Bioblitz Canada is hosting 150 bioblitzes. You can join us on June 24-25 at the Ontario Bioblitz in Rouge National Urban Park. We will also be in Cambridge on July 15-16th with the rare Charitable Research Reserve for their Bioblitz.
Past trips: 2016
Catch the BIObus at events this year in Ontario. On April 23rd you will find us at Guelph Lake Conservation Area for the Guelph Rotary Forest Planting Event. Join us on June 11-12 at the Ontario Bioblitz in the Credit River Watershed. We will also be in Cambridge on August 14th with the rare Charitable Research Reserve for their Bioblitz.
PasT trips: 2015
After crisscrossing Canada collecting terrestrial arthropods in National Parks, this year’s trip is keeping us closer to home. The BIObus will be travelling to National Parks, Provincial Parks and conservation areas in Ontario. Our focus will be on aquatic and soil invertebrates. We have also partnered with rare Charitable Research Reserve to help catalog their arthropod diversity. We will have Malaise traps running on their property all summer long as well as do more intensive sampling with other methods.
Past trips: 2014
For 2014, BIO is dramatically extending collection sites to include various protected areas and not just National Parks. Over 100 Malaise trap sites located in every province and territory in Canada will be collecting arthropods for ‘Barcoding Canada’ Project this summer (see our Maps page). Needless to say, the BIObus will only be able to visit a handful of these sites. The BIObus crew will conduct comprehensive arthropod sampling in 10 different parks with a diverse range of habitats (e.g., Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park and Darkwoods Reserve). We’ll be sampling grasslands in Saskatchewan and coastal and montane regions in British Columbia. The BIObus will also be visiting Kluane National Park, its first ever stop to a Canadian Territory and the farthest north it’s ever gone! Check out the calendar to find out where you can find us this summer.
Past trips: 2013
The BIObus will continue its arthropod inventory work in Canada’s National Parks by visiting 13 parks in 2013, from Pukaskwa National Park in Northern Ontario to Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland (see map here). We’ll also be collecting in a 14th park — Torngat Mountains National Park in Northern Labrador — but the BIObus won’t be going up there, just our traps! Just as in 2012, malaise traps will be set up in each of these 14 parks, for Year Two of our Canadian National Parks Malaise Program. The BIObus crew will also be conducting more comprehensive arthropod sampling in 8 of these national parks — see the calendar to find out when and where.
Past trips: 2012
The BIObus visited 14 parks in 2012, from Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island to St. Lawrence Islands National Park in Southeastern Ontario. A malaise trap was deployed and serviced at each park for the duration of the field season (from early May until late September) in collaboration with park staff. It is estimated that roughly 200,000 specimens were trapped, comprising approximately 15,000 species. As with previous years, all specimens were subsequently analyzed at the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding to continue constructing species inventories for each park visited.
In addition to the malaise trap program, the BIObus crew conducted more comprehensive arthropod sampling in five western national parks: Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan and Waterton Lakes, Banff, Jasper and Elk Island National Parks in Alberta. Here the crew employed several standardized trapping methods (e.g. pitfall, pan, flight interception, light) and other collecting techniques (e.g. sweeping, berlese funnel, freshwater dip-netting) to maximize the breadth of their arthropod catch.
Past trips: 2011
In 2011, the BIObus spent 4 months in the Southern United States, collecting in some of the most diverse State Parks from Florida to California. The trip started by returning to some of Florida’s State Parks visited the previous year, and slowly making its way West. Our path led us from Toad Suck Park in Arkansas to the Northern canyon of Palo Duro Texas, through Dead Horse Ranch in Arizona, and all the way to California with its diverse coastal parks and beaches. More State Parks were visited on the way back, including Catalina State Park in Arizona where the crew arrived shortly after the monsoon, discovering a totally different park, buzzing with widely different bugs and plants. Despite the drought that was affecting the southern States that year; the BIObus collected some very interesting specimens, and finally made it back home to Guelph, Ontario where we began to process all of these interesting creatures.
Past trips: 2010
In 2010, the BIObus first completed a three month expedition to the southern United States; traveling through Florida, Texas, Arizona and Colorado. After a short pit-stop back home at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, the BIObus set out again for Canada’s western national parks; heading to Pukaskwa, Prince Albert, Jasper, Pacific Rim, Glacier, Revelstoke, Kootenay, Yoho and Elk Island National Parks. The expedition collected invertebrate species representative of some of Canada’s most unique habitats. The specimens collected have been added to the current biodiversity inventories of Canada’s National Parks and expanded the growing Barcode of Life Database. The crew was delighted to travel to some of the country’s most beautiful parks and to finally complete the journey from coast to coast after 2009’s expedition to the east coast of Canada.
Past trips: 2009 & 2008
This is the fifth year that the BIObus has been traveling throughout North America. In 2008, the first BIObus expedition visited many of Canada’s central national parks in Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta; including Puskaskwa, Point Pelee, Riding Mountain, Banff, Grasslands, and Waterton Lakes National Parks. In 2009, the BIObus took the crew farther from home, traveling to the Southern United States where they visited museum collections and collected throughout Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and Colorado. A second expedition in 2009 traveled to Canada’s eastern national parks in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; visiting Terra Nova, Gros Morne, Kejimkujik, Cape Breton Highlands, Fundy and Kouchibouguac National Parks. After the success of the 2009 trips, the BIObus continues to travel to parks throughout the United States and Canada expanding the scope and duration of the field expeditions.