Creative ways of doing research

Our field technicians started their third round of measurements in the arable network this month. New this round are the malaise traps, for catching flying insects, and plasticine caterpillars.

Plasticine caterpillars are fake caterpillars made of green clay measuring about 30 by 3 millimetres. We place about 100 of them per site: 50 on the strip crops and 50 on the reference, in groups of 5. We leave the caterpillars on the different crops for a week and afterwards we see how many bird 'bite marks' we find. We measure predation, which is an indirect measure of the amount of birds in the field, and compare this between strip cropping and monoculture.

Last week, we placed the first caterpillars. As we obviously don't want birds to eat the clay, we glue the caterpillars to a piece of cardboard, which we attach to the plant. This way, we avoid glue residues on the

If you're looking for us, we're playing with clay. We are very curious about the first results. To be continued!