Environmental Entomology (1983) 12, 1449-1454

Edward W. Evans, Rick A. Rogers and Dennis J. Opfermann (1983)
Sampling grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae) on burned and unburned tallgrass prairie: night trapping vs. sweeping
Environmental Entomology 12 (5), 1449-1454
Abstract: Two techniques, sweeping with a canvas net and night trapping with a portable trap, were compared as means of sampling acridid grasshoppers in burned and unburned tallgrass prairie in eastern Kansas. Mark-release experiments revealed that night traps on both burned and unburned sites throughout the summer captured roughly three-fourths of the grasshoppers when the weather was clear and warm; thus, the technique provides good estimates of seasonal change in absolute density. Ability to capture grasshoppers on unburned vs. burned prairie differed for sweep sampling (in contrast to night trapping); only 30 to 40% as many grasshoppers (per grasshopper present) were collected by sweeping on unburned vs. burned sites. Furthermore, grasshoppers were captured more readily by sweeping as they grew older. Therefore, sweeping provided poor estimates of how the relative abundance of grasshoppers (1) changed seasonally at a site, and (2) differed between burned and unburned sites. Sweeping and night trapping provided similar estimates of the relative abundances of individual species present at any one place and time on either burned or unburned prairie.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Database assignments for author(s): Edward W. Evans

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
surveys/sampling/distribution

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Melanoplus bivittatus		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Melanoplus femurrubrum		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Phoetaliotes nebrascensis		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Melanoplus confusus		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Orphulella speciosa		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Melanoplus keeleri		U.S.A. (mid S)
	Melanoplus scudderi		U.S.A. (mid S)