Animals

Contents:

More information on animal taxa can be obtained at CSIRO Enotomology, Tree of Life, Smithsonian Department of Systematic Biology or Australian Biodiversity Information Facility.

Traps Design

The animals detected are directly determined by the trapping methods used. The logistical difficulties required in placing traps up into the treetops is daunting and a large effort goes into finding the best way to do things.

Sticky Traps: Are simply cardboard squares painted with glue. These were the primary trap used in the pilot study in early 2003, and have the benefits of being spatially explicit, portable, inexpensive, and relatively durable. These traps target flying creatures. Difficulties involved in placing them included the inevitable stickiness everywhere, the need for a staple gun to place traps to the stringybark, the danger of dropping the cartridge when reloading the staple guns, the use of toxic mineral turpentine to remove the animals, and the inevitable mangling of the animals when removed from the glue. Unfortunately, the presence of ants appeared to reduce the effectiveness of these traps in Tree 4.
Refs: In Progress

Secured bidirectional flight traps: were inherited from Marie Yee's study on invertebrates of fallen logs. They are constructed of a plastic pane secured to the tree trunk with wood screws above a cut-open 2 litre bottle filled with diluted ethylene glycol (antifreeze) as a collecting agent. These traps focus on flying beetles that drop when meeting an obstruction. The numerous difficulties involved in placing these include the need for a cordless drill, the battery drain on that drill, the awkwardness of the construction, the large evaporation from the surface area of liquid, the dilemna of transferring animals from the large collecting chamber to a portable vial, the danger of rainwater overfilling the trap. In the forests of Western Australia, Majer's research team used similar traps near ground level. However, they placed the plastic pane at 90 degrees angle from those illustrated, focusing on animals trying to land on the trunk rather than passing by the trunk. Because of the numerous problems in collecting from these traps, only 3 were set in Tree 1 and collected only once.
Refs: In Progress

Bark Funnel walking traps:are currently under testing and development. They are composed of walking funnel and collection bottle. The walking funnel is made from a 2-litre soda cola bottle with the base cut off to create a funnel. This funnel is pressed to the branch or trunk and secured with nails. The inner side of the bottle is flexible enough to mold to the surface and present only a small ledge for an animal to walk over. This was developed as an alternative to a drift fence which leads to a funnel. The difficulties in securing a drift fence to stringybark while hanging on a rope was prohibitive and this method offers an inexpensive alternative. The collection bottle is any soda cola botle, filled with a collecting agent and connected to the funnel with an adapter. The adapter is merely two bottlecaps with holes drilled through and secured together with packaging tape around the outside and through the inside screw threads. These traps focus on walking animals on the trunk. As designed now, they will work to capture animals moving horizontally and downwards, but further design is needed to capture animals moving upwards. These traps have the benefits of being mostly free of expense (from the Hobart recycling center), durable, simple, easy to collect and replace, and require only a hammer and nails to install.
Refs: In Progress

Photos soon!

Netting traps: were experimented with in Tree 1. They consist of wrapping a section of bark or a dead branch with mosquito netting mesh and securing the sides with cable ties or string. A hole is slit into the mesh at the base and securing a collection jar. These traps were determined to be inappropriate due to difficulties in installing, but will be the subject of future development.
Refs: In Progress

Branch clipping/Foliage Bagging: has been used in many studies at ground level or from the vantage point of a crane or cherry picker truck. It consists of quickly placing foliage into a plastic bag to be investigated in the lab, perhaps after an insecticide application. This method has difficulties for rope users in eucalypts in reaching the foliage, as most of the leaves are at the end of the branches. Furthermore, the inevitable shaking of the branch may disturb what animals are residing there and they may decide to fly away. Where resprouts are near the trunk, this method is appropriate. Collecting leaves to bring to the lab allows calibration of foliage volume estimates to generate biomass and leaf area numbers.
Refs: In Progress

Hanging omnidirectional flight traps: are under development. Based on a trap design published by Wilkening in Canada's pine forests, these traps are made by deconstructing the plastic panels from the secured bidirectional traps and cutting them in half. These halves are slotted together perpendicularly vertically to create a x-shaped cross section panel. Both the top and bottom of this cross panel is fitted with the cut-off bottleneck funnel portion of a 2 litre soda cola bottle. A collection jar is attached to these upper and lower section, and the whole assembly is suspended on a string. The top advantage of this design is the ability to raise and lower these traps on a string from ground level, allowing far more frequent and less strenous collection procedures.
Refs: In Progress