Malaise traps

by Brian V. Brown

A Malaise trap (named after its originator, Swedish entomologist Rene Malaise) is a tent-like structure with a collecting bottle on the top. The top half of the trap is white, the bottom half black. Insects fly in, and make their way upwards to the apex of the trap, the collecting bottle. In the bottle is ethanol, which kills them and preserves them for study. Malaise traps are passive traps, meaning that for most insects, there is no attraction to the trap; they just capture individuals that happen to fly into them. We use black PVC tubing to build a frame to support the traps.