Waxed leaves

We did our first faculty-led project yesterday. This means that one of the resource people (professionals in various backgrounds) created a project and worked with a small group of students to complete the project. Our group fed leaves with trichomes (those little hairs some leaves have) and leaves without trichomes (trichomes were removed through a process we called waxing, akin to putting tape on your arm to remove arm hair) to katydids, like the one in this picture. Our hypothesis was that the trichomes are a anti-predator structure, so katydids should prefer the waxed leaves. We did not find anything significant in our two-day mini project. I did enjoy playing with katydids, though.