Standardizing carabid pitfall catches for trapping effort; a meta-analysis

Abstract

AbstractCarabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) provide important ecological services and are frequently used as a bio-indicator in monitoring environmental quality. The abundance and diversity of carabids is usually determined using pitfall trapping, but trap catches are difficult to compare between studies due to variation in trapping effort. The standardization of the catch for trapping effort has not been previously addressed in a global analysis of studies in the literature.The aims of this study are (i) to define a method for estimating the effect of trapping effort on the size of the pitfall catch, and (ii) to explore factors related to study designs, sampling method, study origin, and level of data aggregation to determine how these factors affect the catch per unit effort in pitfall trapping.We conducted a meta-analysis on the activity-density and diversity of carabids across studies, based on published data from Europe and North-America to analyse whether standardization of catch measurements might be possible. Data were extracted from 104 publications, spanning a period of 42 years.The total catch was proportional to the number of trap days, and ranged from 0.19-9.53 beetles/(trap day) across studies (95% range), with a mean of 1.33 beetles/(trap day). The number of species was allometrically related to the trapping effort defined as the product of the number of traps, their perimeter and the time of exposure in the field, and characterized by a power exponent of 0.25. Species richness ranged across studies from 2.30-13.18 species/(m day)0.25(95% range) with a mean of 7.15 species/(m day)0.25. The size of the catch and the number of species were higher in crops with narrow as compared to wide rows. There was no significant change in abundance or diversity of carabids in arable land over the 42 years covered. We also found that increasing trapping effort may not yield more accurate results.The results show that it is possible to standardize activity-density-based catches and species diversity for trapping effort across studies using a power transformation, allowing meta-analysis of such data, e.g. to elucidate factors affecting abundance and diversity of the focal taxa.