Trap Responses of Flying Insects: The Influence of Trap Design on Capture Efficiency

Insect trapping is a basic field research tool for many biologists, whether they are studying insect pests, disease vectors or insect ecology for its own sake. Any field entomologist contemplating a new insect trapping program or looking to improve or develop an existing scheme will benefit from this broad review of flying insect traps, in which the author draws on a wide variety of methods used by different research projects from all over the world.

Over the years a great many traps have been developed and endlessly modified to suit particular species, habitats, and research requirements. In virtually every case the design of the trap interacts with the specific behavior of the insects involved to bias trap efficiency. In addition, the limited dialogue between workers in different subject disciplines and habitats has caused a shortage of new information available to field entomologists as a whole.

• Describes and evaluates the main methods of trapping flying insects
• Brings together results from agricultural/forest/pest studies and those from medical entomology

Insect trapping is a basic field research tool for many biologists, whether they are studying insect pests, disease vectors or insect ecology for its own sake.Any field entomologist contemplating a new insect trapping programme or looking to improve or develop an existing scheme will benefit from this broad review of flying-insect traps, in which the author draws on a wide variety of methods used by different research projects from all over the world.Over the years a great many traps have been developed and continually modified to suit particular species, habitats, and research requirements. In virtually every case the design of the trap interacts with the specific behaviour of the insect involved to influence trap efficiency. In addition, there has often been only a limited dialogue between workers in different subject disciplines and habitats, so that the experiences and lessons learned have not always been available to field entomologists as a whole.This book should do much to broaden understanding of this subject and to help research workers to develop methods appropriate to their own particular needs.