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Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania

Animals often aggregate at certain sites during vulnerable periods such as night-roosting as an anti-predatory strategy. Some migratory gregarious animals must regularly find new night-roosting sites, but how they synchronously choose such sites is poorly understood. We examined how gregarious nymph...

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Autores principales: Ould Maeno, Koutaro, Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe, Mohamed
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6165013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30104503
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects9030099
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author Ould Maeno, Koutaro
Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe, Mohamed
author_facet Ould Maeno, Koutaro
Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe, Mohamed
author_sort Ould Maeno, Koutaro
collection PubMed
description Animals often aggregate at certain sites during vulnerable periods such as night-roosting as an anti-predatory strategy. Some migratory gregarious animals must regularly find new night-roosting sites, but how they synchronously choose such sites is poorly understood. We examined how gregarious nymphs of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria Forskål (Orthoptera: Acrididae), aggregate at certain plants for night-roosting in the Sahara Desert. Migratory bands of last instar nymphs climbed trees around dusk and roosted there overnight. A spatial autocorrelation analysis of plants indicated that the larger locust groups formed at the larger plants within the local plant community. Other large groups were not formed near the large tree, but smaller groups were patchily distributed. Plant height was the primary cue used by migratory bands to choose night-roosting plants. A nearest-neighbor distance analysis showed that single conspicuous large trees with scattered smaller plants were distributed locally. This plant community structure and negative geotactic ascending behavior of gregarious nymphs may force them to concentrate at the landmark plant from all directions and afar. This plant-size-dependent roosting site choice may contribute for developing artificial trapping systems for locusts and inciting to a new environment-friendly night control approach.
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spelling pubmed-61650132018-10-10 Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania Ould Maeno, Koutaro Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe, Mohamed Insects Article Animals often aggregate at certain sites during vulnerable periods such as night-roosting as an anti-predatory strategy. Some migratory gregarious animals must regularly find new night-roosting sites, but how they synchronously choose such sites is poorly understood. We examined how gregarious nymphs of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria Forskål (Orthoptera: Acrididae), aggregate at certain plants for night-roosting in the Sahara Desert. Migratory bands of last instar nymphs climbed trees around dusk and roosted there overnight. A spatial autocorrelation analysis of plants indicated that the larger locust groups formed at the larger plants within the local plant community. Other large groups were not formed near the large tree, but smaller groups were patchily distributed. Plant height was the primary cue used by migratory bands to choose night-roosting plants. A nearest-neighbor distance analysis showed that single conspicuous large trees with scattered smaller plants were distributed locally. This plant community structure and negative geotactic ascending behavior of gregarious nymphs may force them to concentrate at the landmark plant from all directions and afar. This plant-size-dependent roosting site choice may contribute for developing artificial trapping systems for locusts and inciting to a new environment-friendly night control approach. MDPI 2018-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC6165013/ /pubmed/30104503 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects9030099 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ould Maeno, Koutaro
Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe, Mohamed
Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title_full Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title_fullStr Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title_full_unstemmed Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title_short Aggregation Site Choice by Gregarious Nymphs of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania
title_sort aggregation site choice by gregarious nymphs of the desert locust, schistocerca gregaria, in the sahara desert of mauritania
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6165013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30104503
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects9030099
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