Hello Brett:
I ran across this situation a few years back when I wanted to be able to ID all individuals of a population of patent-leather beetle. After a little trial and error, I cam e up with a techinque that worked well for me. The thorax of these bee tles have a dorsal mid line and so I took advantage of that fact and superglue d flat, colored sequins to the different sides (in different combination s). I had many different colors and both L and R sides to work with. I applied the superglue fairly liberally to ensure that the sequins did not fall off, and also made sure that I was not impeding any bodily function of the beetle (so they could move freely) . If you try this technique, the object that you atta ch to their thorax must be flat - otherwise, the cockroaches might knock them off during their everyday movements . In addition to the abo ve, the beetles sporting their multi-colored sequins looked pretty stylish! Hope this helps - best o f luck with your ecology class exercis e. Regards, Steve Steve Sheffield, Ph.D. College of Natural Resources and Environment Virginia Tech National Capital Region - Northern VA Center Fa lls Church, VA 22043 and Department of Natur al Sc iences Bowie State University Bowie, MD 20715 [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett A. McMillan" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 5:31:20 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Mark-recapture with cockroaches? I was thinking of having students do a mark-recapture population size estimation of the cockroaches in their dorms for my intro ecology class. Anyone ever try this for a class (or otherwise) and have any advice (say about the best marking technique)? Thanks!
