Abstract
Larvae of Psychodidae develop in a variety of breeding sites, including vertebrate feces. As searching for the larvae can be an extremely difficult task, immatures of many species are little known, with descriptions of coprophagous moth flies all from outside the Neotropics. In an attempt to mitigate this challenge, we tested an oviposition trap using cattle dung as attractant, measured the efficiency and specificity of the traps and the most efficient period of exposition in the field. With 60 traps installed in one fragment of ombrophilous forest, 344 immatures were collected, distributed in four species of Psychoda and one of Feuerborniella. Psychodidae accounted for 75% of the collected Diptera. The high specificity of the trap to Psychodidae contrasts with other studies on coprophagous fauna where they appear in low abundance. Based on the metrics in this study, the most efficient period of trapping exposition was between five to eight days, but the difference was not significant probably due to the high number of zero observations among the traps. Many questions pertaining to coprophagous moth flies remain unanswered. Further research is needed to improve trapping efficiency, elucidate the effects of attractants and determine how environmental factors influence the attractiveness of bait.
Highlights
Larvae of Psychodidae can be found in a variety of breeding sites like soil, rotting wood, decaying organic material, moss carpets, fresh water streams, shallow rivers and phytotelmata (Wagner & Ibáñez-Bernal 2009)
The oviposition trap was constructed with one black plate, the superior 1/3 of one 2.5 L pet bottle painted with black ink and one transparent 0.5 L pet bottle (Figure 1)
The plate holding the attractive material was linked by wires to the superior 1/3 of the larger bottle, leaving a passageway approximately 1 cm wide. This structure was coupled with the small transparent bottle by a trimmed 1.5 mL microvial, allowing the transit of adults to the transparent bottle
Summary
Larvae of Psychodidae can be found in a variety of breeding sites like soil, rotting wood, decaying organic material, moss carpets, fresh water streams, shallow rivers and phytotelmata (Wagner & Ibáñez-Bernal 2009). Efficiency of an oviposition trap to collect immatures of coprophagous moth flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) and test the period of trap activity in the field. AN OVIPOSITION TRAP FOR COPROPHAGOUS MOTH FLIES
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