Desert Locusts - Spread Rate and Other Interesting Facts

Biological cycle of locusts and forms of life activity

Fact:
During the mating season, the male insect begins to secrete a special substance, a hormone, to attract a female.
Fact 2:
If there is an abundance of food all year, then locusts will also breed all year round.
Fact 3:
Locusts are a global disaster. It is called the “green plague” and there are even special organizations that are constantly working on finding means to combat the pest and leading this very fight.
Fact 4:
Many southern states have found their own way to “take revenge” on the harmful insect. It is eaten and even considered a delicacy.

The “gray catastrophe” or locust plagues have been known since ancient Egyptian times. Herds of chirping insects do not disdain anything, including human clothing, furniture and buildings with thatched roofs. What can we say about fields, orchards and vegetable gardens? Swarming clouds roll in like huge waves of a menacing ocean before a storm. As soon as one herd, having eaten to its fill, rises from its place, another immediately lands in its place. And so on until there is nothing edible for the insect left on the surface.

Locust breeding

In comfortable conditions, after mating, females lay eggs in moist soil, either waiting for rain or choosing places near water bodies. The incubation period does not last long, on average about two weeks, the larvae hatch, which have to feed on abundant plant food after the rains for about a month and a half until they are completely transformed into an adult capable of opening their wings. From this moment the young are ready to fly.

The fate of each individual may be different:

Singles - appear under favorable conditions and the presence of large free space.
Members of small flocks make small joint flights in the same habitat.
Migrants - when there is a very large concentration of individuals, they create a huge flock that covers incredible spaces during the flight and devours all possible plant food at the landing site.

Description of the insect

The locust's body is elongated, from 5 to 20 cm long , with bent hind legs, which are much longer than the front legs. The insect has hard elytra that cover the barely visible transparent wings. The wings are sometimes covered with various patterns. Locusts have small antennae that are smaller than those of a cricket or grasshopper.

Her head is big and her eyes too. The locust makes a characteristic sound, reminiscent of chirping, it is produced in a similar way: males have special notches that are located on the thighs, and they also have thickenings on the elytra. When these parts rub, a sound of different tones appears. It flies very quickly: a flock of insects can fly about 120 kilometers in a day.

The color of an insect does not depend on congenital factors ; it is influenced by the environment. Individuals from the same offspring, but living in different conditions, may have different colors. In addition, the color depends on the locust's lifestyle. For example, if a female or male leads a solitary existence, then its color may be green, gray, yellow or brown. Also during this period they have pronounced gender differences. When an insect switches to a gregarious lifestyle, it becomes the same as everyone else, and sexual dimorphism disappears. Photo of locusts:

Types of locusts

There are quite a few types of locusts, since they easily take root in a new area, immediately adapting to it; even in Russia, the filly lives and thrives - a peaceful solitary locust that does not flock into swarms.

The most dangerous for agriculture are two subspecies of migratory locusts : the Asian one, which causes enormous damage to cereal crops, and the Central Russian one, which is more adapted to the cold. But, of course, the true scourge of agriculture are two species: the Turanian locust and the Moroccan locust.

The Moroccan locust, reaching 4 centimeters and distinguished by its red-golden color and bright red shins, has settled over a vast territory from Southern Europe to Kazakhstan. Locusts cause irreparable damage to cereals and garden crops. The larvae destroy plants completely; adult locusts devastate hectares of crops, simply gnawing plants at the roots. The Turanian locust terrorizes the population in northern China, Afghanistan, the southern regions of Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

The worst thing is the hybrids: new species born as a result of such mating can inherit the gluttony and gregariousness of the southern locusts and combine them with the resistance to frost of the northern fillies, which will allow them to avoid migration and actively devastate the northern lands.

And

Although the speed of locusts is not the highest in the insect world - only 10 km, swarms actively take advantage of the tailwind, which allows them to fly thousands of kilometers.

One swarm of locusts can include up to 50 billion individuals, and in a day such a swarm can devour four times more plants by weight than all the food of the inhabitants of a metropolis, such as, for example, New York.

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Differences from grasshopper

To an uninformed person, locusts may look like grasshoppers. However, it has considerable differences: the first belongs to the locust family, suborder of the short-whiskered ones, the second belongs to the grasshopper family, suborder of the long-whiskered ones. Other differences:

The grasshopper has longer whiskers and legs.
The grasshopper is a predatory insect, the locust is a herbivore. However, there are times when locusts can eat a weakened fellow.
The locust is active during the day, the grasshopper at night.
The locust causes enormous damage to agriculture, while the grasshopper is absolutely harmless.
Locusts lay eggs in the soil or leaves. Grasshoppers lay eggs in the bark of trees or in the stems of plants.

Harm to agriculture

Locusts have been a terrible scourge for farmers since ancient times. The fear of her attack turned ordinary insects into divine punishment and almost a harbinger of the end of the world.

Time passes, but nothing changes for the locust - it still terrifies with one appearance in the form of a black cloud on the horizon, moving with great speed and the strong noise of billions of wings.

When landing on a field, the flock will not take off until there is at least something green left on the ground, but this food will be enough for it for one day, and the swarm will move on.

Locust plagues can deprive up to several million people of food and occur every 10–20 years when, due to excellent weather conditions, larvae are born in abundance and the swarm faces starvation in its usual habitat.

Fighting methods

Pesticides – allow you to kill locusts the moment they land to feed. A method that loses its effectiveness every year, as new generations are born with resistance to poison. And land contaminated with poison cannot be used for a long time.
Noise - since ancient times, when locusts approached, people came out into the field with rattles, pots and everything that could make noise. Locusts do not tolerate air vibrations well and usually try to find a quieter place.
Biopesticide is a fungus that is deadly to locusts. Sprayed onto a flock, the fungus instantly kills insects and retains its properties for a year, so there is no need to fear an invasion for a long time.

Egyptian and Bluewing

The female Egyptian filly is one of the largest species of locust and grows up to 70 mm, the males are somewhat more modest - 30-50 mm. The insect has a gray, light brown and greenish color. The tibiae of the hind legs are blue, the thighs are orange, with dark spots. Locusts' eyes have black and white stripes. The Egyptian filly is found in the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe.

The blue-winged filly is a standard-sized insect with the Latin name Oedipoda caerulescens. The body length of the female reaches 28 mm, the male - 21 mm. A distinctive feature of the species is its very beautiful wings: they are blue below, colorless closer to the top.

The surface of the beautiful wings has a pattern that consists of dark-colored ray stripes. The tibiae are bluish, covered with small spines. This locust is found in the forest-steppes of Europe, the Caucasus region, Central Asia, Siberia and the territory of the People's Republic of China.

Habitat and diet

These insects can be found on almost any continent, not including those that are too cold. Locusts can be seen in almost all climatic zones, from the subtropics and tropics to the territory of Western Siberia.

Some species prefer to live in dense thickets near water bodies. Others settle in deserts and semi-deserts among rocks with small bushes and grass.

Solitary insects that live in only one place feed little. One individual is capable of eating about 320 grams of vegetation in its entire life. However, once she joins a flock, her behavior begins to change. During the invasion, the darkness of locusts becomes omnivorous and destroys everything in its path. All vegetation is eaten: reeds, reeds, cultivated crops, fruit plots, grape plantations and even thatched roofs of houses. During a hungry period or long flights, the flock eats weakened insects.

Features of names for boys

If we talk about the unusualness of Kalmyk names for boys, it is worth noting groups of words with certain identical directions.

Names are amulets. They were formed through the names of plants, animals, household items, weather phenomena, and seasons of summer. Such words had their own sacred meaning, and in the modern world there was a rumor that they ward off evil power and adversity.
The names are originally Kalmyk. These include rare beautiful Kalmyk names in (types of boys), denoting human qualities, state of mind, physical perfection of people's lives, numbers, names of heroes of the Kalmyk epic.
Names with double roots. Subsequently, another root became the person’s patronymic.
Names are distortions. These are phrases that were formed from the distortion of already existing names. In fact, the wife called her husband by a different name, changing several sounds, as according to legend, this led to the strengthening of the family.
Planet names. They are formed through the words that denote the planets.
Names-terms. Such phrases are most often derived from Buddhist terms.

Recommendations

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external reference

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Desert locust
.

Desert Locust Crisis in the Horn of Africa - FAO website
FAO Locust Monitoring Site
Lubilosa website
Delivery systems
Why the locust swarm: Study finds tipping point
Columbia University IRI Climate and the Desert Locust
Meteorological monitoring of the Desert Locust, at Sahel Resources
Growing locusts for pet supplies
Finite element modeling of insect wings

Taxon identifiers

Wikidata: Q281634
Wikispecies: Schistocerca gregaria
ADW: Schistocerca_gregaria
ARKive: Schistocerca-Gregaria
BioLib: 61280
EoL: 856283
EPPO: SHICGR
Fauna of Europe: 402652
Fauna of Europe (new): 27baa2fc-b5aa-4949-b300-f889c6a088ca
GBIF: 1707320
iNaturalist: 198928
IRMNG: 10475303
NBN: NHMSYS0000377682
NCBI: 7010
Orthoptera species file: 48926
uBio: 8038781

Battle with locusts

It was possible to curb the hordes only by studying the biology of these insects. It turned out that locusts are most vulnerable at the stage of eggs and nymphs. The egg capsules are easily destroyed by plowing the soil, and the nymphs are killed with insecticides or infected with the parasitic fungus Metarhizium. The latter method is especially good, since it is completely safe for the environment, and the reproduction of the fungus in the locust population can be maintained in subsequent generations without human help.

The example of Ukraine is very indicative, where in past centuries locusts were a common insect in the south of the country. It multiplied in reed beds in the Dnieper delta, from where it made devastating raids on the agricultural central regions, sometimes reaching Poland and Lithuania. After the plowing of virgin steppes and the introduction of crop rotation, many eggs began to die during cultivation, and now locusts are rare here.

An even more impressive example is the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) . This is the only native species of locust in North America, whose breeding grounds were located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and from where it raided the lowland states of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Minnesota. American farmers were unable to defeat these hordes until the foothills were plowed, as a result of which these locusts... became extinct!

However, this is the only type of locust that has suffered such a fate - all the others are quite prosperous and numerous. Outside of agricultural areas, these insects play a significant role in ecosystems, as they serve as food for many species of birds and animals: guinea fowl, partridges, small falcons, kites, secretary birds, ravens, crows, bustards, meerkats, wild pigs, warthogs. There have often been cases of locusts being eaten by herbivorous ungulates, but researchers differ in their assessment of this phenomenon. Some say that wild antelopes and livestock readily take advantage of such random feeding, while others testify that livestock deaths have been reported after eating locusts.

General characteristics of the pest

Locust sizes vary from 3 to 7 cm. Females are larger than males. The body is oblong, attached to it are rigid elytra and a pair of translucent wings, which remain invisible when folded. The color is very variable and depends on the age, conditions and lifestyle that the locust leads:

Even individuals emerging from the same oviposition may differ in coloring.
What a locust looks like is also determined by the phase of its development.
In the European zone, single individuals are predominantly yellow, brick, green, olive, brown in color, which helps to camouflage against the background of the surrounding vegetation.
The older the individual, the darker its color becomes.
If the locust joins the swarm, it acquires the same color as the rest of the team members.

The large head is not particularly mobile. Large crescent-shaped eyes and a rectangular, almost square muzzle of the locust give the insect a good-natured appearance. The gnawing mouthparts are represented by powerful jaws that help gnaw through even the thickest and most durable stems. The insect gnaws leaves with its upper mandibles, and only then crushes them using its lower mandibles.

A distinctive feature of locusts from their closest relatives: crickets and grasshoppers is their short whiskers, their length does not exceed half the body.

The pinkish hind legs are well developed, which allows the locust to jump at a distance of 20 times its length. It is no coincidence that insects are endowed with jumping abilities. In the larval stage, they still cannot fly and their motor capabilities are limited to crawling and jumping. Some species do not exhibit flight activity even as adults.

How long locusts live depends on environmental conditions. Rainy seasons provoke the development of fungal plant diseases, which leads to insect infection and death. Natural enemies: wild wasps, beetles, birds can also shorten life expectancy. Humans also make their contribution by destroying pests. If the locust is in optimal conditions and has not become anyone’s victim, then it can live from 8 months to 2 years, depending on the species.