Centro Iberoamericano de la Biodiversidad, Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, 03080 Alicante, Spain.
J Insect Sci. 2011;11:95. doi: 10.1673/031.011.9501.
Light traps have been used widely to sample insect abundance and diversity, but their performance for sampling scarab beetles in tropical forests based on light source type and sampling hours throughout the night has not been evaluated. The efficiency of mercury-vapour lamps, cool white light and ultraviolet light sources in attracting Dynastinae, Melolonthinae and Rutelinae scarab beetles, and the most adequate period of the night to carry out the sampling was tested in different forest areas of Costa Rica. Our results showed that light source wavelengths and hours of sampling influenced scarab beetle catches. No significant differences were observed in trap performance between the ultraviolet light and mercury-vapour traps, whereas these two methods caught significantly more species richness and abundance than cool white light traps. Species composition also varied between methods. Large differences appear between catches in the sampling period, with the first five hours of the night being more effective than the last five hours. Because of their high efficiency and logistic advantages, we recommend ultraviolet light traps deployed during the first hours of the night as the best sampling method for biodiversity studies of those scarab beetles in tropical forests.
灯光陷阱被广泛用于昆虫丰度和多样性的采样，但它们在热带森林中基于光源类型和整个夜间采样小时数来采样金龟子的性能尚未得到评估。在哥斯达黎加的不同森林地区，测试了水银蒸气灯、冷白光和紫外线光源对 Dynastinae、Melolonthinae 和 Rutelinae 金龟子的吸引力，以及夜间进行采样的最适宜时间段。我们的结果表明，光源波长和采样小时数影响了金龟子的捕获量。紫外线灯和水银蒸气灯之间的捕虫效果没有显著差异，而这两种方法捕获的物种丰富度和数量明显多于冷白光灯。物种组成也因方法而异。在采样期间，捕获量存在很大差异，夜间前五小时比后五小时更有效。由于其高效率和物流优势，我们建议在夜间的前几个小时使用紫外线灯陷阱，作为热带森林中这些金龟子生物多样性研究的最佳采样方法。
