Planned intervention: On Wednesday April 3rd 05:30 UTC Zenodo will be unavailable for up to 2-10 minutes to perform a storage cluster upgrade.
Published April 24, 2017 | Version v1
Journal article Open

A new LED lamp for the collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera and a spectral comparison of light-trapping lamps

Creators

  • 1. Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

Description

Most nocturnal Lepidoptera can be attracted to artificial light sources, particularly to those that emit a high proportion of ultraviolet radiation. Here, I describe a newly developed LED lamp set for the use in the field that is lightweight, handy, robust, and energy efficient. The emitted electromagnetic spectrum corresponds to the peak sensitivity in most Lepidoptera eye receptors (ultraviolet, blue and green). Power LEDs with peaks at 368 nm (ultraviolet), 450 nm (blue), 530 nm (green), and 550 nm (cool white) are used. I compared the irradiance (Ee) of many commonly used light-trapping lamps at a distance of 50 cm. Between wavelengths of 300 and 1000 nm, irradiance from the new lamp was 1.43 W m-2. The new lamp proved to be the most energy efficient, and it emitted more radiation in the range between 300 and 400 nm than any other lamp tested. Cold cathodes are the second most energy-efficient lamps. Irradiation from fluorescent actinic tubes is higher than from fluorescent blacklight-blue tubes. High-wattage incandescent lamps and self-ballasted mercury vapour lamps have highest irradiance, but they mainly emit in the long wave spectrum. The use of gauze and sheets decreases the proportion of UV radiation and increases the share of blue light, probably due to optical brighteners. Compared with sunlight, UV irradiance is low at a distance of 50 cm from the lamp, but (safety) glasses as well as keeping sufficient distance from the lamp are recommended. In field tests, the new LED lamp attracted large numbers of Lepidoptera in both the Italian Alps and in the Peruvian Andes.

Files

NL_article_11887.pdf

Files (11.9 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:6b4a4b3ea241c168bd8ee16504d23037
11.7 MB Preview Download
md5:224d483dea823e21ecbda412eb26d0f6
148.3 kB Preview Download

Linked records