What means do you use to collect specimens ?

[leptraps]

A thread began in Show your Favorite Specimens: Putting a Face to the Collector. One of my post to that thread was about collecting Asterocampa in bait traps.

By what means do you collect specimens?

I use on a regular basis: Nets, Bait Traps, Light Traps, Pheromone Traps, applying bait to trees to make a bait trail, Collecting Lights and collecting off the lights of buildings and signs. I have even picked a specimen off the grill of a truck at a Kansas truck stop.

That is how I do it, how about you!!!




Net in hand, Poverty Hollow, Montgomery County, VA



Bait Trap in the Lower Rio Grand Valley, Starr County, TX



Light Trap, Along Yazoo River, Leflore County, MS

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Light Rig, Great Smokey Mountain NP, Near Clingmans Dome, North Carolina



Pheromone Trap for Sessid moths, Palm beach County, Lake Worth, FL

[joee30]

Haven't used much other than aerial nets, sweep nets, and MV and blacklights. This is my primary collecting method.

[Deleted]

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I use the good old net, blacklights with halide, slop on trees (sugaring), gas stations and the like, tapping when I can, and sometimes calling females.

[Deleted]

Some pics of my sugaring and tapping capture apparatus. The kill jar gets screwed on after a moth is in the view chamber and I ascertain it is a keeper. If not, I slide the door up by the contoured end where it meets the tree and the moth flies off free. If I want it, I open the sliding door nearest the jar and the moth just slides down to the jar.

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[anthony]

I use a net for the garden plus the internet to do a lot of my collecting. Also black lights.

[nosorog]

Feb 10, 2014 4:55:32 GMT -8 anthony said:

I use ... the internet to do a lot of my collecting...

That's right. Internet is the best tool to buy and exchange insects.

[vgashtarov]

Feb 10, 2014 8:36:21 GMT -8 nosorog said:

Feb 10, 2014 4:55:32 GMT -8 anthony said:

I use ... the internet to do a lot of my collecting...

That's right. Internet is the best tool to buy and exchange insects.

Internet provides you everything, but the excitement and these sweet memories when you find moth which wasn't collected 100 years ;-) or just insect you you wanted so badly :-P

[Deleted]

Good points about the Internet. I obviously have to use it to get specimens I would otherwise not be able to. It is a form of collecting, but if I had to choose it or field collecting, I would prefer going out in the field. Nothing beats that moment when some prize lands on ones sheet at 2:00 in the morning or is lazily drinking up from slop put on a tree hours earlier.

[vgashtarov]

Shown 'tent light trap' belongs to my friend, I have absolutely the same, just havent pictured it yet. The original idea is of a friend from Finland R.H.
It can be assembled for 30 - 40 seconds + 40 second more to do all the cables. This is  one of the most useful tings I have.

[vgashtarov]

I do the same (buying) billgarthe, there are Lepidoptera which are so very difficult to obtain. But generally avoid buying, I am not a rich person and it seems I will never be ;-)
Last time I bough something, it cost 1/2 of my salary - Aenetus eximia (Hepialidae)- then for less than 3 weeks I obtain by exchange another 3 species of this genus + few giant Abantiades from Australia.

[lepidofrance]

Collecting specimens :

1. Butterfly net (Ecuador) :

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2. Light trap (French Guyane) :




3. Mango Fruit bait (Cameroon) :




4. Banana + beer + rhum + sugar trap (French Guyane) :




5. Mashed paper (toilet paper) for Hesperiidae (Ecuador) :




6. Rotten fish (or shrimps) + urine : mainly for Nymphalidae, Riodinidae and some Hesperiidae (Ecuador) :



It seems, from several records including my own experiment, that in Eastern South America fruit baits work all right. In Western South America (Ecuador, for example), fruit baits give poor results. Much better are rotten fish or shrimps baits (it works also for Morphos). Anyway, for Morphos, I use a blue lure (and a red lure in South East Asia for Troides and Ornithoptera) :

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[prillbug4]

I use a 175 watt mercury vapor light, I have three of them. I also have a self-ballasted 160 watt mercury vapor light. I use pitfall traps for various beetles, and if a mouse falls into the trap, I use it as carrion. I also use squid and octopus liquid in the pitfall traps. I also use three black lights, one is dark spectrum. And I also take an ice cream container, and fill it with brown sugar water, with the lid on and a hole cut into it. I also check flowers during the summer months, and use my beating sheet, and also use my sweep net. Plus, I visit old logs and tear into them by removing the bark. I also check various dung. Cow dung is very good for scarab beetles, and Staphylinidae which visit the dung to feed on fly larvae and other insects. I simply string a line between two trees and attach the lights with the sheet clipped onto the line, and the lights resting in front. A good stream is also very good for finding Cicindelidae and other Carabidae, especially in the early spring months. Plus, I have a generator to power one of the mercury vapor lights, and I use a boat battery to power the black lights.
Jeff Prill

[Deleted]

Net, fingers and light sheet. See poor quality cell phone photo of new light sheet rig I built this winter.

[evra]

Don't forget everyone's favorite: rearing. The bottom line is that when I want to collect something, I get it any way that I can: light trapping, bait trapping, pheromone lures, nets, rearing, finding cocoons out in the wild, etc. It can be frustrating, especially rearing, but the more difficult it is, the more rewarding it is once you succeed.

[cabintom]

I mostly use a homemade net attached to a broom handle. I've also cobbled together a bait trap with the materials I could find here... though I need to upgrade from the metallic mesh I have to mosquito netting. I've been using mostly banana bait... but the only thing I've caught it in has been Charaxes brutus (they love it though) and a couple bright green beetles. Lastly, in mornings I check the walls on the office buildings nearby to see what moths have turned up.

Tom