Insect Mobility and the Philosophy of Crop Protection with Reference to the Sudan Gezira |
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| Authors: | R J V Joyce |
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| Institution: | Ciba-Geigy Agricultural Aviation Research Unit, c/o Cranfield Institute of Technology , Cranfield, Bedford |
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| Abstract: | Abstract Mobility results in movement of insects from their birth place (emigration) to another site (immigration). The scale, both in time and in space, on which such migration occurs may determine rates of increase or decrease in numbers in a fixed geographical area or plot. This is self evident in the case of mobile insects, such as locusts. Other documented examples include the spruce budworm in Canada and the Queensland fruit fly. In the Sudan Gezira the distribution of the major insect pest of cotton, Heliothis armigera Hb., was found to conform to a common temporal pattern over probably some thousands of square kilometres, and other major pests, Empoasca libyca de Berg and Bemisia tabaci Gen., are considered to be similarly distributed, suggesting that their occurrence in damaging numbers may be dominated by transport and concentration by major windfields rather than by natality and mortality within a field or area. This posibility was investigated using a Pilatus Turbo-Porter aircraft fitted with Doppler Navigator equipment and an insect collecting net, and densities of flying insects monitored by a ground-based Marine-type Radar. The results of this study will make it possible to determine the spatial extent of a threatening population and the time during which that population is present, so that control action may be taken on a commensurate scale. Such matching of scale of operations to insect mobility is of particular importance when repeated invasions occur during periods of rapid crop growth, because it enables non-persistent insecticides to be employed, thus providing potentially better utilisation of parasites and predators than can be achieved by maintaining the crop as an environment lethal to insects. These procedures, connoted ‘synoptic survey’ and ‘synchronous control’, require that the control is applied on a scale determined by pest mobility rather than by the boundaries of fields or other artificial constraints. Evidence is accumulating regarding the importance of insect mobility, in particular adaptive dispersal, in population dynamics and this may require re-assessment of farmer and government responsibilities in crop protection. |
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| Keywords: | Screening cowpea resistance Aphis craccivora |
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