{"id":51,"date":"2009-05-01T07:38:01","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T12:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/?page_id=51"},"modified":"2009-05-01T07:38:01","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T12:38:01","slug":"insect-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/management\/insect-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Insect monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

As an entomologist, my methodology is based around catching or trapping individuals so that I can either identify them in the field (butterflies & moths etc) or take them home for closer examination under the microscope (flies, wasps and beetles etc). In this article I will go through some of the pros and cons associated with practical insect trapping methods. Some good examples of insect catching methods are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Hand-netting<\/strong>: Probably the easiest and most accessible way to catch insects is still a hand-net. I find that a good ‘butterfly net’ is my most essential piece of field equipment, along with my note book. Sadly a net is often maligned by people who imagine that the carrier is going to kill lots of butterflies. In fact the carrier is far more likely to be after moths, flies or wasps and most entomologists only kill insects when it is necessary to identify them – in quite a lot of cases it is just necessary to catch the insect for closer examination before releasing it.<\/li>\n
  2. Malaise trap<\/strong>: \tThis is my own personal favourite – perhaps because it yeilds so many \tspecimens and it does all the collecting work for you! See my seperate Malaise trapping article.<\/li>\n
  3. Yellow Pan traps<\/strong>: \tIn this technique you lay out yellow or white ‘pans’ filled with \tslightly soapy water. Insects that are attracted to white or yellow \tflowers are then attracted to the bright pans and drop into the water \twhere they are caught. I haven’t actually used this method before but it \tis supposed to be very easy to set up and it can bring in many flying \tinsects that are attracted to flowers. It does have the disadvantage \tthat it can’t be left for long periods and it can be interferred with \t– eg. by rain or thirsty dogs drinking the water! Most people will empty the pans daily – or twice on a hot summer’s day.<\/li>\n
  4. Pitfall traps<\/strong>: \tVery easy to set up – just bury some plastic drinking cups in the soil \tso that their tops are level with the ground. Fill them with a mixture \tof water and anti-freeze and to top them off you can place a flat tile \tsupported on 2 or 3 rocks to prevent animals investigating the \tcontents. This method is very useful for collecting ground-dwelling \tinvertebrates, such as Isopods, spiders or beetles.<\/li>\n
  5. Moth Trap<\/strong>: \tI ran a Heath Protable Moth Trap during the spring & summer in the \t10 years between 1988 and 1998. The project was very successful and \tprovided us with yearly moth population data. Unfortunately, since 1999 \twe I have not had the help of a resident summer warden and so we have \thad to finish this project.<\/li>\n
  6. Photography<\/strong>: Digital photographs can provide useful ‘field memos’ and \tattractive souvenirs of a field trip, but are not always very useful for \tidentification purposes. This is because, although large insects (eg. \tbutterflies, large moths, grasshoppers and dragonflies etc) can be \tidentified by comparing them to pictures, most insects are not \tidentified by comparing them to pictures. Instead they need to be \trun through dichotomous keys that rely on the comparison of minute \tfeatures, such as wing venation, bristles and paternation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As an entomologist, my methodology is based around catching or trapping individuals so that I can either identify them in the field (butterflies & moths…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":17,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-51","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions\/53"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartslock.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}