Camera traps for monitoring insects - supporting information

Insect and pollinator populations are vitally important to the health of
ecosystems, food production, and economic stability, but are declining
worldwide. New, cheap, and simple monitoring methods are necessary to
inform management actions and should be available to researchers around
the world. Here we evaluate the efficacy of commercially available,
close-focus automated camera traps to monitor insect-plant interactions.
We compared two video settings—scheduled and motion-activated—to a
traditional human observation method. Our results show that camera traps
with scheduled video settings detected more insects overall than humans,
but relative performance varied by insect order. Scheduled cameras
significantly outperformed motion-activated cameras, detecting more
insects of all orders and size classes. We conclude that scheduled camera
traps are an effective and relatively inexpensive tool for monitoring
interactions between plants and insects of all size classes, and their
ease of accessibility and set-up allows for the potential of widespread
use. The digital format of video also offers the benefits of recording,
sharing, and verifying observations.