Seeing the light
A group of us headed to Toohey Forest last night to look for insects and any other critters we might happen across. James Tweed set up a light in the forest, consisting of a LepiLED powered by a USB powerbank hanging inside an IKEA wardrobe! This setup was relatively new to us, with previous standard operating procedure being to set up a sheet with a UV light nearby. The wardrobe system is excellent, because insects can approach from any direction and settle, and multiple people can circulate around the wardrobe. Although, seeing a bunch of people dancing around a wardrobe in the middle of the forest must have been a very strange sight to the couple of folks that passed by! The system is very portable, and we were keen to know how well it would perform.
The answer was - EXCELLENTLY! We immediately had lots of insects visiting, and even a lovely big wolf spider attracted by the cornucopia of prey. We saw a nice variety of insects, mostly moths, but with a good dose of planthoppers, parasitoid wasps and other goodies. A wander in the forest using the old fashioned technique of searching with head torches produced many other cool species, including several beautiful Grey Huntsmen. James managed to collect several stems of Alphitontia excelsis in which longhorn beetle larvae were hollowing out the inside. It will be interesting to rear these through and see what species are involved. We spent quite some time inspecting an old Ochrogaster lunifer nest while learning about their biology from a postdoc working on them.
We left the site about 9pm determined to do this more often. We documented most of the organisms we encountered on iNaturalist so the records can be preserved for posterity and immediately put to good use by researchers and conservationists around the world. Here are some pictures of the amazing creatures we saw.