Abstract

PEREZ-HERNANDEZ, Cisteil X. et al. Efficiency of pitlight traps with LED for sampling nocturnal Coleoptera (Insecta) in tropical forests. Acta Zool. Mex [online]. 2017, vol.33, n.2, pp.314-327. ISSN 2448-8445.

In this study, with the aim to provide more efficient tools for insect monitoring, we test the efficiency of pitlight traps with light-emitting diodes (LED) in captures of nocturnal Coleoptera from a tropical forest. Under the hypothesis that pitlights are more efficient and that insects would be mainly attracted by shorter and higher frequency wavelengths, families and morphospecies diversity obtained with passive pitfall and pitlight traps of three different colors (blue, white and yellow light) was compared. In addition, with the purpose to analyze the necessary time to obtain a significant sample of Coleoptera, sampling was carried out in two nocturnal periods of five hours. Captures with pitlight traps were noticeably superior to that with passive pitfalls and, even though there were no significant differences between richness, abundance and diversity values obtained for three color of LED (blue, white, yellow), not even among both nocturnal sampling periods, we found a high dissimilarity in morphospecies composition among them. Pitlight traps with LED are a simple, portable and inexpensive method able to obtain an efficient and significant capture in short time periods, so we recommend their use for the inventory of Coleoptera communities.

Keywords : Sampling; light-emitting diodes; tropical rain forest.

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