Distinct communities under the snow: describing characteristics of subnivium arthropod communities.

Arthropods are active during the winter in temperate regions. Many use the seasonal snowpack as a buffer against harsh ambient conditions and are active in a refugium known as the subnivium. While the use of the subnivium by arthropods is well established, far less is known about subnivium community composition, abundance, biomass, and diversity and how these characteristics compare with the community in the summer.

Collecting Nontarget Wood-Boring Insects for Host-Specificity Testing of Natural Enemies of Cerambycids: A Case Study of Dastarcus helophoroides (Coleoptera: Bothrideridae), a Parasitoid of the Asian Longhorned Beetle (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae).

We describe approaches to addressing the perennial challenge of collecting a sufficient diversity of nontarget insects for host-specificity testing of candidate biocontrol agents of invasive wood-borers such as the Asian longhorned beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae). Multifunnel and intercept traps, retrofitted to maintain live insects and baited with cerambycid-specific pheromone lures, were deployed in diverse forests in southeastern Massachusetts. We collected 1,288 adult beetles comprising 56 species, mostly from the subfamilies targeted by the lures (Cerambycinae and Lamiinae).