Cerambycidae, Latreille, 1802

Puker, Anderson, Evangelista, Luiz Filipe Ferreira, Carli, Camila Da Silva, Cupello, Mario & Monné, Marcela Laura, 2024, Use of colored fruit-baited traps for trapping Cerambycidae (Coleoptera: Chrysomeloidea) reveals six new records for the state of Rondônia, southwestern Brazilian Amazon, Zootaxa 5514 (2), pp. 188-200 : 191-192

Cerambycidae trapping

Inside each forest area, a sampling point was set at least 50 m away from its edge ( Fig. 1a ). In each sampling point, four fruit-baited traps (i.e., blue, yellow, red, and transparent-control) were installed ( Figs. 2b–e ). The traps were hung from tree branches by using a fishing line 4.5 m above the ground, and spaced ca. 4 m from each other in a square shape. To measure the traps installation height, we used a 4.5 m long stick with a forked (“Y”) tip, which was used as a template to adjust the height. Then, the trap was placed at the tip of the stick, and taken until it passed over the selected branch. Next, we adjusted the height of the trap by positioning the stick immediately beside the side openings of the trap. We hung the traps 4.5 m high because it optimizes the fieldwork by facilitating manual installation ( Puker et al., 2020). Furthermore, previous studies have demonstrated that this trap installation height allows sampling the representative diversity of Cerambycidae in the Amazon rainforest (see Touroult & Dalens, 2012).

Sampling was carried out monthly between February 2022 and January 2024, resulting in a sampling effort of 20 traps per month and 480 traps in total (i.e., 4 traps/forest area × 5 forest areas × 24 sampling months) over the course of the study. In each sampling, the traps were baited with 300 ml of the bait (mixture of pineapple and sugarcane juice) that had been previously prepared (as described above). Traps remained active in the field for seven consecutive days, when the full content of the traps (i.e., bait and captured insects) was placed in labeled plastic bags containing ethanol fuel for subsequent sorting and taxonomic identification (next section).

Figures

FIGURE 1. (a) Geographic location of the sampling sites of cerambycid beetles in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, municipality of Colorado do Oeste, Rondônia, northern Brazil; (b) Habitat (Amazon rainforest fragment) where cerambycids were sampled.

FIGURE 2. (a) Colored traps used to collect cerambycid beetles in this study; (b) the blue, (c) yellow, (d) red, and (e) transparent traps installed in the understory (4.5 m height) of the Amazon rainforest.