Dung Beetle Traps

A simple pitfall trap works well. Bury a plastic cup in the ground, with the lip of the cup at ground level. Pour some low-tox antifreeze into the bottom of the cup. Suspend a smaller cup (half the diameter or less of the buried cup)from the lip of the larger cup with a piece of wire. Bait with dung. Pig, human, or any other omnivorous mammal dung works best.

Greetings,

58Chevy has it right - simple and easy!

Here are some details as to how I do it. I use the pint-sized deli cups for the trap collection cups.

For the bait, I take a wire coat hanger, cut out the straight bottom section, and bend one end into a loop about 2" in diameter (think of the old Paas Easter egg dipping wires for coloring eggs) - just big enough to hold a small plastic condiment cup. You can get the cups in most restaurant supply stores, or in most Asian groceries in their plastic container section. Just below the loop, bend the wire at a 45 degree angle - this allows the straight end to be pushed into the soil beside the collection cup, and allows the bait cup to hang level.

You can buy snap-on lids for the condiment cups too, and pre-fill them, snap on a lid, bag up the bait cups and just pop off a lid and drop in a bait as you place the traps.

Too easy, and the catch can be phenomenal in the right situation...

Cheers!
Bandrow

many years ago our late friend Ross Storey DPI entomologist who was keen on dung beetles & everything else told me sink a cup in the ground and use your finger and smear faeces around the inner edge of the cup , never knew if he was serious or not , I never tried that.Some museum guys told me suspend a muslin bag of faeces over a pit fall , I tried that and the next morning my dog came up to me and presented me with a tea bag of crap while having breakfast .I haven`t done too much pit falling since those days and might give it another go soon.
I like your trap politula .
A friend from the museum uses rotten mushrooms fermenting in a plastic bag , you will feel ill when you smell that

Just go outside - take a dump on the ground - and then put it into a jar. Add enough water to make it look like you are sick, and stir in a spoonful of maltose. It’s ready to use.

Note that if you add maltose and then cap the bottle – pressure starts to build up. You do not want this crap spaying out of the bottle when you open it.

Trust me – you don’t want this!

John

Yes, it's ok to leave poop in the jar. But once you add the maltose – it becomes super poop. We were in Belize once, and a co worked left super poop in the SUV. So much pressure built up that it creased the lid and sprayed crap all over the back storage area. The car rental place was not amused.

I wasn’t too happy about it either.

I've been told that human and pig is the best - never heard too much about other sources. Mostly because I'm not really a coleopterist. When I've been involved with this, we are setting lots of traps as part of ecological sampling projects, and you need a good supply.That's the only time I really do any of this.


Here is a photo showing the pitfall traps - with the rain shield off. I should point out that rotting mushrooms and carrion are also great baits for beetles - and attract diferent groups. With Carrion, you really need to secure a rain shield with chicken wire that is spiked into the ground. Otherwise scavengers will wreck the traps.


John

Be sure to take gloves along. When filling bait cups etc, there will be spillage. Dung on its own will dry out quickly so it's a good idea to add something, I haven't tried maltose, but I have used molasses and it works. To cover my traps I use squares of metal I've cut from old filing cabinets, plus chicken wire like jshuey suggested. Dung traps can be a gold mine. I like the idea of freezing bait but I do my dung beetle collecting in the US and live in Canada. Explaining a cooler full of frozen dung at the border would be problematic.

If you seal it up too tightly - then yes, you can keep the beetles out. It doesn't show in the photo, but the rain roof is tilted so that at one end it's a couple cm off the ground. Same with the wire - there are ways to get around and through it.

What you don't want is rain filling the cup, diluting the preservative and rotting your bugs. Or a racoon or skunk ripping up the whole works.

By the way you can see in that first photo the consistency of the bait after a week in the field. So you definately want to add something that makes it pretty wet. All the maltose does is activate the bacteria present, which makes all the stink that beetles are attracted too. To make the reaction last a week - the poop is about 50% diluted with water and maltose. Same with fungi and rotten fish - add plenty of water so that it really rots during the baiting period.

Here are a couple more photos so that you can see the consistency of poop before and after the sampling period. The poop is whiteish - that's the maltose. The second photo is a simple rain roof on dung to show how you leave enough space for the bugs to enter. Nothing is very interested in ripping up and eating dung, so this roof is simply nailed down with 10" nails. You have to add more security for baits that raccons may eat

John