Introduction and application of a composite insect trap for the National Ecosystem Survey of Korea

This study aimed to establish the best applicable method for the National Ecosystem Survey (NES) guidelines by (i) verifying the efficiency of an insect trap that combined the Malaise trap, flight intercept trap, and pitfall trap (MFP trap) as part of the improvement for the terrestrial insect field in the fifth NES, and (ii) comparing the result with the currently used Malaise trap and pitfall trap (MP traps). We found that the efficiency of attaining species diversity was much higher with the added flight intercept trap function than the current Malaise trap alone for flying insect collection. For collecting ground insects, the efficiency of attaining species diversity of the pitfall trap from the MFP trap was lower than that from the MP trap. Besides, the Malaise trap of the MP trap showed superior efficiency than that of the MFP trap in species diversity. The results suggested that modification, supplementation, and re-testing should be performed by analyzing various factors such as the trap material, barrier size, capturing container inlet, and mesh size, with consideration of the design of the current Malaise trap. Therefore, in survey-based research, which aims at identifying insects species diversity and inhabiting status-such as the NES, it is necessary to introduce the MFP trap with the flight intercept trap function added to the Malaise trap function, and for the pitfall trap function of the MFP trap, it can be operated as a separate trap from the MFP trap.