A COMPARISON OF LIVE VERSUS KILL PITFALL TRAPPING TECHNIQUES USING VARIOUS KILLING AGENTS

We compared the efficacies of two arthropod pitfall trapping technique s: live (dry) trapping and kill trapping with three killing agents (wa ter, ethylene glycol, and the recently developed propylene glycol, who se efficacy has not been previously assessed). Kill pitfall traps caug ht more species than did live pitfalls. Forty-one species were collect ed only from kill traps (3 being unique to water, 11 to ethylene glyco l, and 8 to propylene glycol), 12 were collected only from live traps, and 32 were collected from both kill and live traps. The same average number of individuals per species was caught for most of those taxa t hat were collected in both trap types, indicating that better retentio n of captured arthropods by the killing agent was not responsible for the differences observed in the two pitfall trapping methods. There we re no significant differences in captures between propylene and ethyle ne glycol traps or between water and live traps. Because of species-sp ecific differences in the efficiencies of live and kill pitfall trappi ng, cross-study entomological comparisons made using kill pitfall trap ping and live pitfalling may be confounded.