Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China.
Institute of Entomology, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China.
Bull Entomol Res. 2022 Oct;112(5):691-696. doi: 10.1017/S0007485322000104. Epub 2022 Apr 6.
Sampling flower-visiting insects in agricultural fields at large spatial and temporal scales is significant for understanding local insect pollinator communities. The most commonly used method, pan trap, has been criticized due to its attractant bias. A window trap (also referred to as the flight-intercept trap) is a non-attractant sampling method, which has been applied in forests and grasslands, but rarely in agricultural fields. We aim to test whether we can replace pan traps with window traps in agricultural fields by comparing species richness and species composition between the two methods, and to show whether flower-visiting insects collected in both traps can reflect flower-visiting activity recorded by camera observation. We conducted a 2-year study to compare the performance of these sampling methods in an oilseed rape field. Results showed that the relative abundance of dominant flower-visiting species was highly correlated between the window trap and the pan trap samples, while window traps caught more individuals and higher (rarefied) species richness than pan traps. The species composition of window traps was more similar to each other than that of pan traps. The proportion of honey bees ( spp.) collected in both traps underestimated their flower-visiting activity recorded by camera observations, while sweat bees (Halictidae) and butterflies (Lepidoptera) were overestimated. Our study suggests that the window trap has the potential to serve as an alternative sampling method of flower-visiting insects to the pan trap. However, we need to be cautious when using specimens caught in both traps as a proxy of their flower-visiting activity.
在大的时空尺度上采样农业领域的访花昆虫对于了解当地昆虫传粉者群落具有重要意义。最常用的方法是诱捕器（pan trap），但它由于其引诱剂的偏倚而受到批评。窗式陷阱（也称为飞行截获陷阱）是一种非引诱剂采样方法，已应用于森林和草原，但在农业领域很少应用。我们旨在通过比较两种方法的物种丰富度和物种组成，来测试我们是否可以用窗式陷阱替代诱捕器，并且展示通过两种陷阱采集的访花昆虫是否能反映相机观测记录的访花活动。我们进行了为期两年的研究，以比较这些采样方法在油菜田中的表现。结果表明，窗式陷阱和诱捕器样本中优势访花物种的相对丰度高度相关，而窗式陷阱比诱捕器捕捉到更多的个体和更高的（稀疏化的）物种丰富度。窗式陷阱的物种组成比诱捕器更相似。两种陷阱采集的蜜蜂（ spp.）比例低估了它们通过相机观测记录的访花活动，而熊蜂（Halictidae）和蝴蝶（鳞翅目）则被高估了。我们的研究表明，窗式陷阱有可能成为替代诱捕器的访花昆虫采样方法。然而，我们需要谨慎使用两种陷阱采集的标本作为它们访花活动的代表。
