USA Cerambycidae2

[58chevy]

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[KKarns]

Wonderful species! Appreciate the post.

[vabrou]

Here at my home, Abita Entomological Study Site, near Abita Springs, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, USA.

[vabrou]

Saperda candida (F.), etc.

[vabrou]

more here from my home

[vabrou]

more again from my home

[KKarns]

Love the Goes species! Thanks for posting Vernon.

[58chevy]

Great selection of cerambycids. The Neoptychodes is one of my favorite species. Did you use bait?

[vabrou]

58chevy --- We have used fermenting fruit bait traps off and on for the past 50+ years. My wife and I would spend a half day blending up bananas, apples, peaches, pears, plums, blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, beer, sugar etc.....and would do this to prepare 30-50 gallons of bait each month. Our bait traps like all other traps we operate, run all 12 months of the year. We had live capture bait traps and automatic-capture bait traps (using NaCn as the killing agent). We would place and always keep 2+ gallons of fruit bait in each trap, and refresh the bait every day of two (just adding a bit to top off the containers). It is best to keep the bait containers full and the bait thick in consistency. If the insects fall down into a liquid bait container they would drown and be destroyed, if the bait is thick then the insects can walk upon the bait and not drown before entering the capture part of the trap. So the answer is yes, we do use bait. Because of our tremendous use of bait traps, around 40 years ago we planted around 160 pear, apple and other fruit trees here at our home to have unending supplies of many different fruits. But, this year (our 55th) is our last year of non-stop insect trapping for the majority of insects here. Getting too old to keep up the long term fanatical pace. We have spent the past three years picking up, cleaning and storing our hundreds of insect traps.

Would like too run our 88 dung beetle traps, but that is so very labor intensive, not to mention messy even using the novel methods we have developed over the decades. (Over the decades we were actually able to purchase two vehicles(pickup trucks) using proceeds from our dung beetle trapping here at our home). Obtaining bait for these traps is a major part of successfully operating dung beetle traps, and we have developed novel methods regarding this as well, which includes special preparation, handling and storage of (liquid poop). Here because of the very hot temperatures it is necessary to run these traps (pick up specimens) a minimum of one time every day, and each time we encounter these traps, it is necessary to top off the bait containers daily, because of the same reasons I mention regarding topping off fermenting fruit bait traps -- if the dung beetles fall into the container they quickly are quickly destroyed especially in those traps operating in full sunlight. And, the large most sought after beetles (genus Phanaeus) are primarily collected in traps operating in full sunlight. The majority of our automatic-capture dung beetle collecting does not involve digging holes in the ground.

We probably will run some of our 250 semiochemical lure traps for clearwing moths as we still have hundreds of unused commercial and special order lures in our storage refrigerator. Clearwing moths have been our favorites for over a half century, having personally captured around 400,000 adult moths here in Louisiana, beginning the the late 1960s, to today 6-7-2024.

Attached are single examples of 1. bait trap, 2. clearwing moths on spreading boards, 3. typical daily catch of dung beetles

[Chuck]

Vernon, I'm not sure if you're absolutely dedicated, or insane. Have you ever taken a vacation?

[vabrou]

What is a vacation?

For attention. Here is a Sphinx moth species I described 42 years ago.