First Collection of the Pitfall Traps

On By Erik OstrumIn Collecting Outings, Uncategorized, Working on the Collection

I went out and was able to collect the first samples from the pitfall traps I put out. Because of work travel they were left out for 2 weeks, which I think I will continue the rest of the season.

There was a cold and wet spell during one of the weeks that lasted almost the entire week so I was worried about the state of the traps but luckily I worried for nothing. Despite this the traps still had good production.

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I was pleased to find a few tiger beetles in a couple traps which I was hoping for. At first glance I feel I had a decent amount of beetle variety.

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Some more beetles and some grasshoppers graced me in these couple traps. I was surprised by the number of grasshoppers captured in the traps.

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This is the accumulation of all 12 traps, as you can see a large amount of ants (mostly from 2 traps) are present along with a good amount of grasshoppers and beetles. I can’t wait to sort through everything. Right now they are in storage as I’ll go through them this winter along with all the other pitfall samples I collect.

3 thoughts on “First Collection of the Pitfall Traps”

  1. Edward Smith

    Wow, I am very impressed by the number of grasshoppers that were collected from your pitfalls. I look forward to hopefully seeing these pinned in months to come. Just a few questions about storage. How long can you store insects before pinning? What do you recommend to store them in? If alcohol, do you need to change it with fresh alcohol to keep the insects preserved? Or, just top it up from time to time when some evaporation takes place? Sorry for the list of questions. But, I am very interested in maintaining any insect specimens I will collect this summer. Thanks once again for a great article!

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    1. I store them in 70-80% ethyl alcohol. I usually only change the alcohol if it gets discolored by the specimens. I usually get all the specimens pinned before I need to refil the alcohol but if you want to top it off every now and then that would be fine. As for storage I try and use canning jars since it limits evaporation and I store in someplace cool (fridge works excellent) which also helps prevent evaporation and I feel it keeps the specimens better as well (especially for DNA) but just a cool closet will work as well.

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