Captures of aquatic insects in polarized light traps at three distances from rivers in New York State

We created traps consisting of illumated oil-filled trays of 5 different colors that variously horizontally polarized light from ~20% to ~100%. These were placed in a row 5, 10 and 15 meters from 5 different rivers in southern New York State. They were exposed for 2 hours before sunset and their location randomized every 20 minutes. The goal of the study was to map the behavioral reaction norms of a diversity of aquatic insects to variation in the degree of polarized light and to understand how those reaction norms shifted as a function of the distance between a high quality natural habitat and the ecological trap habitat the test surfaces represented. Metadata for the variables is provided.