New Apparatus and Rearing Techniques for the Study of Wireworms (Coleoptera: Elateridae) in Organic Soils

Extract

Adults attracted to heap-traps are normally mixed with a large quantity of hay trash which makes the recovery of beetles tedious and difficult. To facilitate this work, an insect sorting box was designed and built. To recover the beetles, the heaps are shaken above the cover of the box and the insects with the trash fall into the box through the wire mesh. The beetles run in all directions to avoid daylight and finally enter one of the darkened compartments where they drop through the funnel opening into the attached glass jar. The beetles are then recovered from the jars and separated out under clean conditions within a very short time.