Surveying moths using light traps: effects of weather and time of year.

Light trapping is an ideal method for surveying nocturnal moths, but in the absence of standardised survey methods effects of confounding factors may impede interpretation of the acquired data. We explored the influence of weather, time of year, and light source on nightly catches of macro moths in light traps, and compared four strategies for sampling by estimating observed species richness using rarefaction. We operated two traps with different light sources for 225 consecutive nights from mid-March to the end of October in eastern Germany in 2011. In total, 49 472 individuals of 372 species were recorded. Species richness and abundance per night were mainly influenced by night temperature, humidity and lamp type. With a limited sample size (