Charity Insights

My internship at London Wetland Centre has finished. It has been great 4 weeks. I have done all the fieldwork designed by myself and I have completed my report for WWT. I marked all the sites where different species of ladybirds were spotted on the map of LWC and included it in my report. The main findings from my quantitative measurements are as follows:

• Ladybird community at LWC is dominated by harlequin ladybird – Harmonia axyridis, which comprises 70% of all tree-living ladybirds at LWC.
• There is a positive correlation between the density of aphids on the tree and the abundance and diversity of ladybirds living on the tree.
• Spiders and mites (known together as Arachnids) presence was found to have no influence on ladybird prevalence.
• Similarly, ants showed no or very weak correlation with prevalence of different ladybird species.

Such dominance of harlequin ladybirds is pretty amazing considering that this species was firstly noted in England in 2004. It took it only a decade to outcompete native UK ladybirds and become the most common species, which is why it draws attention of scientists and it has been extensively studied over the last couple of years.

As this is my last post, it is time to reflect upon the benefits I gained from Charity Insights. This project was a fantastic opportunity to step into a completely new environment. I met some interesting people and I got a chance to work in the office for the first time in my life. I used to cooperate with nongovernmental organisations in the past as a volunteer, but it was never a regular work on a daily basis. Thanks to this project I could get a good insight into the way a conservation charity is run. I was working under supervision, but at the same time I was to some extent independent and this independence was important, because it gave me a lot of freedom in terms of my style of work. On the other hand, having this independence required making decisions by myself and hence taking full responsibility for my actions and being self-disciplined. Being in charge of my own project gave me a lot of self-confidence, which will certainly help in my future career no matter what path I choose in the end.

In order to complete my project I could finally use the skills that I gained throughout my degree like maintaining scientific rigour while desigigning and performing the experiment, doing statistical analysis of data, writing scientific report in the real-life situation. The point of all the effort that I put into this project was not to get a good grade, but to collect information that are useful to somebody and may be used in their future work. I must admit that it was very satisfying.

I have commented about how great LWC is in my previous posts, so I am not going to repeat myself. But here are some photos just to emphasise what a nice place London Wetland Centre is.

Read End of the internship at London Wetland Centre. in full

I am in the middle of my internship at London Wetland Centre. I have finished sampling in the field and now I am moving on to data analysis and writing my report for WWT about ladybirds at LWC. Fieldwork was quite intense, it took 9 consecutive days of sampling, interrupted by the moody weather. Still, on most of the days I managed to sample throughout the whole day, but sometimes I had to stop after 2h due to rain. I must admit that I really enjoyed fieldwork – I was outside all the time and in the very pleasant surroundings, which fully compensated the repetitiveness of the actions that I had to undertake to collect enough data. Also, the working environment at London Wetland Centre is very good. Everyone is really nice and engaged in their work.

The choice of the right method that would enable me to achieve my aim, was occupying me for the first week of my internship. I eventually decided that for this habitat the best method would be so-called tree beating. This means that in order to sample I was holding a beating tray underneath a tree branch while hitting the same branch with a stick for a certain number of times and then examining what species of ladybirds, if any, were captured on the tray. I was also looking at ants and spiders that are natural enemies of ladybirds and at aphids that are ladybirds’ food. As sampling was going along, I noticed some limitations to my method, which I will now have to consider in my report. For the last part of my internship I will focus on analysing collected data. I will look at the proportional abundance of different species in ladybirds community at London Wetland Centre and the effect of the presence of aphids and natural enemies on the abundance and species richness of ladybirds.

While I was doing my fieldwork I got a chance to see how many visitors LWC has every day and what a wide range of activities is offered to them. I understood how important role LWC plays in educating people about wetlands and natural environment in general. They offer plenty of interactive educational tools for kids to learn about the most interesting species inhabiting wetlands, but also to learn about sustainable ways of living and the consequences of people’s irresponsible actions to the environment. My work also generated quite a lot of interest. Many visitors, especially children were intrigued by what I was doing and I had to answer loads of questions.

However, London Wetland Centre is important not only for its educational role, but also for improving the quality of Londoners’ lives. This peaceful area with thriving wildlife provides a great place to rest from the noise of the city. There are many bird watching points and a lot of benches all over the place where you can sit if you are tired of walking and simply enjoy the nature. LWC truly is a wonderful place!

Read Internship at London Wetland Centre – continuation. in full

WWT (Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust) is a conservation charity that aims to sustainably manage and protect wetlands and species associated with this particualar type of habitat, as well as educate people about the importance of wetland environment. The charity runs 9 nature reserves across the country and one of them is located in west London. What I like about LWC (London Wetland Centre) is the fact that there is such a nice nature reserve in this big city and also that WWT fantastically combines their scientific mission with being very open to the public.

First day of my internship at (LWC) started with a short induction. I have already been introduced to the main bits during my last visit here when I met my supervisor to discuss the Charity Insights application, so the induction was pretty straightforward and I could move on to the implementation of the plan of my internship. My project is basically an ecological research, which aims to determine the structure of ladybird community at LWC and investigate the competition between invasive harlequin ladybird and native ladybird species. It will help WWT with keeping record of the biodiversity at LWC.

I started with doing preliminary observation – I was walking around LWC and carefully examining the vegetation in terms of presence and absence of ladybirds. I was marking on the map sites where I spotted ladybirds and I will return to these sits later on to do the quantitative sampling for my project. Spending the whole day in the wetland area gave me the feeling of the atmosphere at LWC. It is quite a busy place, there are a lot of school trips, families with small kids and older people – everyone coming there to enjoy the wildlife.

After completing preliminary observation, which gave me a good idea of the habitat that I will be studying, I was sat in the office to design the methods for my research. It is an interesting experience, as I have never worked in the office before, so it is a completely new working environment for me.

I think the beginning is the most difficult stage of my project – deciding on the right procedure to collect the precise, accurate and useful data that will allow me to answer the research question and then first day of sampling, when I have to implement the procedure that I wrote down and discussed with the supervisor into practice. But I am really looking forward to collecting the data. I want to see if my hypotheses are true and I am going to spend the next week outside in this beautiful place. I hope the weather will be good!

Read First week at the London Wetland Centre in full