About the study
This archive accompanies a final-year undergraduate research project carried out on the University of Ghana campus at Legon. The study asks a simple question with a long history in ecology: what happens to an insect community as human disturbance increases?
Three sampling points were chosen to form a disturbance gradient — a shaded reference woodland, managed grounds under routine mowing, and an open roadside margin under constant traffic. At each point, insects were located, photographed in place wherever possible, and identified to family and genus.
Every record here is a photograph first. Macro photography was chosen deliberately: it documents the specimen without removing it, it preserves the colour and posture that keys and pinned collections lose, and it leaves a public record that anyone can check.
Method
Sampling followed the same protocol at each of the three points on the gradient, so that differences in the recorded assemblage reflect the sites rather than the effort spent on them.
Specimens were photographed with a macro setup at close working distance. Where an individual could not be identified in the field, additional frames were taken of the head, wing venation and tarsi to support later identification from keys.
Identification was carried to family and genus. Species-level identification was not attempted for most taxa: many of the groups recorded here — particularly the Diptera and the smaller Hemiptera — need dissection or a specialist revision to separate reliably, and the project's photographic approach deliberately does not collect specimens.
Colophon
Photographs and field records by the project author. Identifications to family and genus.
The archive runs on PHP and MySQL with no framework and no build step. Typography is Bodoni Moda for display, Hanken Grotesk for text, and DM Mono for taxonomic labels and record numbers.