Insect behaviours associated with resource finding

摘要

All insects move, but the degree of movement varies greatly between individuals and species. Thus scale insects and wingless aphids may spend their life-time on a small area of a single plant and move only centimetres, tsetse flies move hundreds of metres across the African savannah while desert locusts travel thousands of kilometres during their movements to feeding/breeding areas. For scale insects and aphids, the resources required, such as food and oviposition/larviposition sites, are to hand and determined by females of the previous generation. But, somewhere along the way, the resources required to sustain the life and reproductive potential of the individual as well as survival of the subsequent generations need to be located. The major resources required by insects are food, mates and oviposition sites but resting sites and diapause sites are also needed by some species/generations. All have to be found and the probability of success will depend not only on resource abundance and distribution but also on the efficiency of the sensory processes and behavioural mechanisms.