Trap reports Updated 2/19/11

So i have four fall traps set in the ground for catching insects and arachnids and anything else lucky enough to have a cross species interaction/learning session with me, and i went out to check them today. My camera isnt good enough to take any quality photographs and my chick took hers so i have to just google images for you.

2/14/11

I found one animal which i think isr a "Rock crawler" (Gryllobatidae) it was about 50 mm



I caught five Lycosidae spiders (Pordosa sp.)

The four i measured were 13mm, 10mm, 12mm and 12mm



I caught a 14mm carabidae beetle (Pterostichus sp.)



I also caught a different carabid (Carabus sp nemoralis?) 30mm



I also caught two very large green smooth grubs with no feet but two in the bakc which i think maybe beetle larvae but my camera is so [hopscotch] that I cant get any good id photos and dont even know whereto look to find them.

one was 14mm the other was 30mm.

Nice finds man

But I gotta ask, are the pics you're showing yours or did you find them on the internet?

Sweet thread. Were there any specific animals you wanted to catch? Speaking of fall traps, I'm actually going to set up one soon. I'm hoping to catch a couple of western fence lizards which are very common around my area. I've actually caught one before doing the same method, so I hope it will work this time as well.

Canth wrote:

Nice finds man

But I gotta ask, are the pics you're showing yours or did you find them on the internet?

Ya these are google pics becasue i didnt have a quality enough camera to snap photos of them so im just showing examples of what i caught with google images.

H. laoticus wrote:

Sweet thread. Were there any specific animals you wanted to catch? Speaking of fall traps, I'm actually going to set up one soon. I'm hoping to catch a couple of western fence lizards which are very common around my area. I've actually caught one before doing the same method, so I hope it will work this time as well.

I love Western fence lizards! I find them alot in the eastern end of the columbia river gorge here in Oregon. the traps are just for anything i can find cruising around in different areas of the property. Its a nice way to catalog the different organisms which make up the micro ecology of the places where i dont have time to do intense field work in. I would love to find some Wandering Bothriocyrtum because thats the animal im into at the moment. I think its a little too late to find the males because they like to mate after the first rains. I already found several of them in our goats watering trough. but Im just looking to catalog the species on my property and get some nice photos. I have a buddy who lives in bend and i want to set some fall traps out there in the hopes of finding scorpions/spiders and jerusalem crickets.

So this next report is for 2/17/11.

I went out and checked all the traps, but most of them were full of water because it has rained and snowed pretty hard for the last few days. But i did have some real good luck in my last trap that i checked out. I trapped two crickets and one of the Bothriocyrtum spiders which i have been looking for for a few days now. interestingly i think this one is a female. everything i read about this species suggests that its the males that do the wandering.

The two crickets that i found were both dead. they were on the bottom of the water and probably had been there for some time because i hadnt checked the traps in a few days time since we were out of town.

This first one is a female of what i believe is Tachycines Asynamorous (Rhaphidoporidae)



here is a male of the same species:



and here we can see them both together and get an idea of the size difference of these two specimens.



The bothriocyrtum spider that i caught in the trap is a female i believe and shes about 13mm in length. theres a real interesting story that goes with her because i found her in the bottom of the cup trap and she could have been in the water for up to three days. I thought she was drowned, but when i picked her up she was moving. i was surprised. she was moving very slowly though and since i didnt have a camera at the moment to take pictures of the spider so i put her back in the water assuming she would die anyways and i put the container in the refridgerator so she didnt decay until i could get the camera. the next day i had the camera and i fished the container out of the refridgerator. the container was at the back and it colder there so the water actually froze. when i got the spider out of the water she was still alive! What a testament to the hardiness of this species which i assume is B. californicum.









This final Bothriocyrtum image is a video of the spider that we took. we are prodding her with a chop stick to make her move a little




finally i looked in one of the goats watering containers in the hopes that i may have found some drowned Bothriocyrtum but instead found a very large caterpillar of the same species as the one i was trying to find earlier in this thread. it was 3 cm in length but very soft and beginning to decompose because it had been in the water for so long. i didnt take a picture of it. The web site butterfliesandmoths.org never did help me out with the identification of the larvae. Still waiting

I checked the traps today (2/19/11) and i did have some good luck today. I found a few creatures to catalog and got some photos of them as well:

I found a 16 mm gryllobatidae species (rock crawlers) I dont actually know too much about these guys but i find them pretty much every time i go out and check the traps so they must be very prolific and abundant in this area.





I found two Harvestmen (opilliones)

One was 10mm and the other was 9mm. these are much smaller than the ones i find wandering about in the later warmer months which leads me to believe that these were juveniles. I only took a picture of the 10mm one.





I also found another live specimen of what i believe is a camel cricket (Tachycines Asynamorous (Rhaphidoporidae)

I believe that this one is a male. he is 20 mm in length




I found a small Pardosa sp. i believe this to be a female. she is 12 mm in length

wow, that is one resilient little spider! Sheesh, being underwater for days and then frozen lol
By the way, I was wondering if you use any sort of bait in your traps? The last time I put a banana in, I caught about 20 black beetles. The time before that, I baited my trap with some crickets and caught a western fence lizard (which may or may not have been due to the prey, but who knows). I'm hoping to do the same thing again, but with just prey items instead of fruit. I found that the trap I set with the banana had been tampered with by a raccoon or some other furry animal because there were claw marks and no banana left lol.

Huh i never really thought of baiting the traps. Ill try banana and maybe one with adead rodent in it and see if i cant catch a carion beetle.

Sweet, let us know how that goes. I think you'll be catching more than usual, but we'll see what happens.

Hey, I tried using pit fall traps to catch the western fence lizards, but had no luck. I had a lot of bait in it and everything. I blame some of that on the not-so-sunny weather we've been experiencing here. But anyways, I managed to catch them using a different method. You can check out that thread on the "Herps and Amphibians" forum. By the way, have you set any new traps?

i found this one under my board i put out for snakes to crawl under but end up getting a striped bark scorpion instead!! how cool that was!!

i also pin bugs that i find in my car grill and ones that die around my house ! here is some picks of the ones i have pinned so far ! and no i dont kill bugs i found all these dead!!!![img][/img]