Aquatic Invertebrates of Montana

Traps

Some advantages of collecting with traps

• Traps are more unbiased than human collectors.
• Traps can be designed, set and baited to target certain taxa.
• Traps can be replicated and used in experiments.
• Traps can provide some quality control for hand collecting methods.
• Traps integrate over time and might see rare or short lived species.
• Traps patiently wait for favorable weather conditions even when rare.
• Traps can provide clean samples that require little sorting.
• Traps are generally inexpensive.
• Traps can collect from even sensitive habitats with little impact on the area.

Some disadvantages of collecting with traps

• The samples can be lost due to trap destruction by the elements, animals or vandals.
• The traps may take some non-target taxa including rare or endangered species.
• The catch is not related only to organism density, but to density and species specific catchability.
• The trap catch may be smaller or larger than desired for analyses.

Some types of traps useful for collecting aquatic invertebrates

• Bottle traps
• Light traps
• Drift nets
• Emergence traps
• Sticky traps
• Lindgren Funnel trap
• Pitfall traps