The e-funnel trap: Automatic monitoring of lepidoptera; a case study of tomato leaf miner

•The electronic funnel trap (e-funnel) wirelessly reports counts for all the Lepidoptera species with known pheromone.•There is no statistically significant difference between insect counts reported to the server and manually verified counts.•Manual counting of insects can be replaced by e-traps.•e-funnels are reliable enough to shift decision making from weekly-based to daily-based.•The Technology Readiness Level is 9 (TRL-9). We introduce the electronic funnel trap (e-funnel) of automatic monitoring for all the Lepidoptera species with known pheromone. The e-funnels carry an optical counter that counts captures of Lepidopterans and form their own network based on the LoRa radio protocol. The gateway of the network reports collection results of insect counts, GPS locations, time-stamps and temperature to a cloud server. We evaluated the trapping efficacy and specificity of typical funnel traps versus a network of their electronic versions using sex pheromone as lure to determine the population dynamics of Tuta absoluta (Gelechiidae). Results show that there is no statistically significant difference between insect counts reported to the server and manually verified counts. However, the e-funnel network recorded 84% of the captures of an identical network of typical plastic traps.