Attracting Charaxes jasius

[simosg]

I want to try attracting Charaxes jasius. Does anybody have experiences / recipes?

Hannes

[nomihoudai]

In Italy I was able to attract them to a mixture of mashed bananas mixed with sugar and wine that I let some time in the sun,... here is a picture of one of them :

insectnet.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=favorites&action=display&thread=129

I wish you a lot of luck with it ! Also check your trap often because the specimen I did trap got eaten by birds/hornets.

[saturniidave]

A good friend found them commonly feeding from old wine casks in a vintners. Maybe a wine rope would work?

[thanos]

Here,I have no need yet of finding a method(trap etc) to attract C.jasius,as I have found a few very good habitats of olive trees,Arbutus unedo(the larval foodplant) and Ficus carica,where in late August is found a good population of the species,so am able each time to collect quite many specimens of both sexes with my net within a few hours.As known,it is a very fast flier,but the adults feed very readily on the mature fruits of Ficus carica or rest on the branches of these trees,so are collectable there.
I think that a big trap,which would contain many mature or rotten fruits of Ficus carica,and would be fixed among the branches of a tree(even an olive tree)at the habitat of the species and in the exact flight period of the species in your country(here best season is late August),would work fine for sure.
About hornets that nomihoudai mentioned above,yes he is right,you have to check very often your traps,cause I've also experienced big Vespa crabro feeding also on the mature/rotten fruits of Ficus carica and attacking C.jasius ! Once,I even saw a V.crabro hornet killing a C.jasius in the air ! The butterfly immediately fell down on the ground while flying.And I remember it was a perfect specimen,so the hornet did some work for me ;D .

Thanos

[bobw]

I've trapped C. jasius in northeast Spain using a mixture of banana and peaches left to ferment in the sun for a few days. I've sometimes found ten in each trap during a day along with many P. fidia and a few A. ilia.

They're also attracted to more noxious substances; I once returned to the car to find some on a dog turd beside the car. I lowered the net over it and they didn't move - I had to remove each one by hand and throw it into the net. When I'd finished I counted 22 males which had come off this one turd.

Wild caught females are very difficult to get to lay, I usually only got four or five eggs out of a female. However, there were many Arbutus bushes in the area and it was easy to find 100 eggs in a couple of hours so there was no need to catch adults. Interestingly, after hand-pairing, captive-bred females laid readily.

Bob

[simosg]

OK, thank you all, I will have a try.

Hannes