COMPARISON OF TRAPS AND DEVELOPMENT OF A 2-STAGE SAMPLING PLAN FOR SMOKYBROWN COCKROACHES (DICTYOPTERA, BLATTIDAE) OUTDOORS

Four commercial sticky traps were compared with jar traps for sampling smoky-brown cockroaches, Periplaneta fuliginosa (Serville), outdoors. Lo-Line and Raid Roach Traps caught more cockroaches than jar traps, whereas the Mr. Sticky and Roach Motel caught <40% of the cockroaches caught in jar traps. Sampling properties of traps (data collected over 4 yr and 3 cities) were examined retrospectively. Taylor's a and b co efficients were both significantly >1 for jar traps, Raid Roach Trap, and Lo-Line trap. Estimating cockroach catch typical of Alabama (<3 pe r trap) at single houses would require >20 traps with a precision of 0 .25 (i.e., standard error as a proportion of the mean). Taylor's power law was also used as a predictor for within-house (i.e., pooled withi n-house) and between-house catch variances. Coefficients for these pre dictors are presented that can be used in a fixed-precision 2-stage sa mpling plan to estimate cockroach catch from large areas.