I heard of bat-scientists who developed a kind of motion sensor photo trap.... It's a kind of frame with a infra red sensor and when an animal flies through the frame, a camera takes a photo with flashlight. It worked so well, that they also got many photos from moths. If you think that such photos are sufficient for your research I could try to get the contact data for you?

Many thanks, Christina! It sounds feasible... I would be very grateful if you could send me the contact details.

Maybe some method of interception flight trap, like Malaise trap or pennsylvania insect light trap (I think should be better), however they get damaged because they are stored in alcohol and other insects are collected together.

I've read articles about remote trapping for moths (mainly in remote mountainous areas in Scandinavia). They use battery operated actinic traps fitted with photo-electric switches (trap turned on at dusk and off at dawn) and charged by solar panels. They are, however, total kill traps - which I would not recommend - even though it is the only efficient way to do it over an extended period. The quality of specimens will suffer and I would guess that many would only be identifiable from their genitalia.

Thank you verty much Alexandre Somavilla and Martin Honey for your quick responses, I found them very helpful.

I found a potentially useful paper by Chen et al (2014) describing an optical sensor and a Bayesian classification approach that automatically quantifies and identifies flying insects, mostly mosquitors. Find attached.

Are you looking to evaluate the biodiversity of sites? If no, there are various pheromone-based trapping methods that you might use. I have been sampling Tortricid moths using sex-pheromone baited Unitraps - this has worked really well for measuring abundance across the species' flight periods. It is advantageous in that the traps can be emptied on your schedule. However, this method will only work for species with pheromones that have been identified (and can be synthesized in a lab/are commercially available).

Many thanks for the advice, Tyler. I think the pheromone-baited traps might work. I'm not particularly interested in biodiversity paramenters, but I just need to get an estimate of the fluctutations in food availability for insectivorous birds.

Delta sticky traps are a long lasting and water resistant device that can be used in conjunction with a number of Lepidopteran pheromones. The pheromones are species-specific and thus have a minimal effect on beneficial insects. Accurate monitoring is essential to minimise damage and protect crops. Therefore, installation of the Delta trap will ensure you are alerted to the presence of unwanted pests at an early stage, detecting the insects before they become a major problem and enabling timely and effective treatment.

Luis Miguel Constantino, this is a really good point. However, I think that moth abudance might be understimated by checking sticky traps on a weekly basis. I guess that the traps would fill up in just a couple of days when moths are most abundant...

I contacted the people with the bat-photo-trap. Unfortunately they told me, that a) the apparatus is very delicate to handle or copy and b) They can not guarantee that smaller moths could also activate the sensor... I also misunderstood - the camera rather makes a little movie after each activation, not a photo, so that would be a greater amount of data and you would have to check on the apparatus more often.

But I guess I could inspire you a little bit at least ;)

Greetings!

Sure!! Thanks a lot, Christina Staudigl

Carlos:

You can add a collector container in the form of a mesh cage to capture the moths, the problem of not checking the traps daily is that many non-target species are captured causing a very high needless mortality of insect species, it is best to check the traps daily and release the rest so as not to affect the local biodiversity of insects. You have to protect the species, think proactively.

In China, Jiaduo company can support this special light trap for this kind minotring.

It can be killed moths by heater system and keep the sampled moths in to sperated bays in each days.

The price is about $ 2000-2500 per light trap

Lu

Many thanks Lu, but I'm afraid $ 2000 for a trap exceeds my budget. Of course, it is not my intention to kill moths unnecessarily - indeed, I don't even need to identify them individually, as my study bird species is not very picky when it comes to foraging. Hence, the best option so far seems to be the optical sensor.

Carlos, we are experimenting with equipment from Trapview out of Slovenia for exactly this purpose. They make several products specifically designed for remote monitoring of moth populations.

Dear Ronald,

First, thanks for the info! I would be very grateful if you could provide further details about these products and tell me more about how they work. My email: [email protected]

Details here: http://www.trapview.com/v2/en/ although I suspect it's not what you are looking for.