Pitfall mixtures, headlamping trail mix

[bathcat]

I'm wondering what everyone uses in their pitfall traps when going for Carabidae. Currently I have had reasonable success with just pink RV antifreeze with no runners, but I'm sure that I made four or five pit complexes I would get more. Trying to figure out what microhabitat is most productive in the meantime, cause I don't see the sense in putting all the effort into a five pit complex only to find out that there's nothing walking on a particular kind of pine duff.

A Scaphinotus collector I know suggests half beer, half RV antifreeze, with a bit of dish detergent to keep the surface tension down. He also has a serious problem with raccoons and bears raiding his traps, probably because of the beer. I was thinking putting denatonium benzoate into the mixtures would help this. A taste of that stuff and that particular animal wouldn't be interested in the next cup on the line.

Also, what does everyone use for headlamping bait, the stuff you drop along a path before dark to occupy nocturnal, wandering beetles? I have tried the banana slices trick without much success, but the same collector I mentioned earlier says:

"I recently tried adding liquid bait to the banana trail and it greatly increased the effectiveness. I mixed beer (two cans), brown sugar, artificial banana extract and molasses in 2 liter bottles. Water was added to top them off. The caps were punctured with a nail hole. By squeezing the bottle I was able to deliver a constant stream of bait."

This sounds great to me, but I haven't tried it yet.

What about you? Post your Silphidae, Carabidae, Geotruipidae, etc. recipes as well.

[thanos]

During my experiment of my degree thesis in the university, where I studied the insect fauna of hedgerows and cultivated lands of an area here in Greece, I extensively used pitfalls. Just water with 2 drops of liquid soap for dishes worked great for me. I cought thousands of specimens of many species, almost all of which I identified (many small ones under stereoscope) : tons of Silphidae (Silpha, Nicrophorus, Blitophaga), Scarabaeidae (Onthophagus, Aphodius, Copris, Gymnopleurus, Sisyphus, etc), Staphylinidae (Ontholestes, Staphylinus, Quedius, Hesperus), Histeridae (Hister, Macrolister, Merohister, Platylomalus), Carabidae (Cryptotrichus, Calathus, Ophonus, Pterostichus, Amara, Brachinus, Carabus, Chlaeniellus, Chlaenius, Cymindis, Pseudomazoreus, Zabrus), Cicindellidae, Trogidae, Tenebrionidae,..


Thanos

[Borja Gómez]

Hello

I often use wine or beer diluted in water and of course few drops of some surfactant (generally a soap). While wine usually attracts in ingent quantities of Carabus sp (cancellatus, lineatus, violaceus, auratus...), Amara sp, slugs and diptera (fruit flies) mainly, beer seems to be more unspecific but attracting a much big wider spectrum of Carabidae genera, families of coleoptera and orders of insects. Of course some of the catches are random insects that have bad luck falling into the trap (because that's one of the pitfall trap objectives) but in comparison with the pitfalls with no attraction substance, the ones with beer work better getting the variety. Nevertheless my results never showed much specificity about the pitfall with beer as bait as a pitfall with wine does with the mentioned Carabidae.
For get the silphidae I get the best results with dead animals obviously rather than pitfall, despite sometimes they can appear there. I want to try a trap with some rotten meat as bait, to see the results. But when I go hunting I always have a stick or something for manipulating corpses (birds works well, but the best are mammal corpses) and get specimens of Nicrophorus, Silpha, Necrodes, Oiceoptoma, etc... and also dermestids, Trox sp., and Staphilinids like Philonthus are abundant.
And for Geotrupidae and Scarabaeinae, well... more of the same "" Although I found that Trypocopris sp. often comes to the beer in the pitfalls. But Nothing like the satisfaction of stir a good dung to find a nice Bubas or Copris

Regards

[bathcat]

A friend has suggested raw chicken wings with hot sauce on them for silphids and staphs. Chop them in half or so, and then suspend them over the trap. This may be an artifact of him constantly surveying for Nicrophorus americanum, which prefers avian corpses. I also hear that staphs in the northwest here love rotting squid tied in a open bleach or milk jug.

People have suggested pig and human (wugh) dung for scarabs and the like, but I have not tried it yet. I do like a nice Phanaeus as much as the next collector, but I don't want to track down an organic pig farmer and ask to raid his pens, and I really don't want to deuce in a deli cup and have to dole it out into the suspensions myself