Insect Neurophysiology and Botanical Pest Control

ISBN-13: 9786204204963 / Angielski / Miękka / 116 str.

Zainab Ali Saad Abdelatti

Opis

Orthopteran insects constitute the most important group of plant-feeding insects. This insect taxon has fascinated researchers for decades because of its stereotyped acoustic communication and devastating swarming behaviour. Both of these topics were studied in model species belonging to the order of Orthoptera. First, signal detection in noisy conditions was studied in the chirper bushcricket Mecopoda elongata, where males produce periodic chirps to attract females acoustically in their habitat. Second, a novel botanical pesticide based on linseed oil was developed to control the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria and the migratory locust Locusta migratoria. Both species can form destructive swarms in their gregarious phase and pose a great threat to agriculture. Finally, the hypothesis whether or not fatty acids contained in linseed oil act as a swarm disruptive agent for gregarious desert locusts was tested in behavioural experiments.

O autorze

Abdelatti, Zainab Ali SaadDr.rer.nat. Zainab A. S. Abdelatti is an Egyptian mother of 3 young children. She is a lecturer at University of Graz-Austria. She will soon be promoted to the position of Assistant Professor of Entomology at South Valley University-Egypt. She is very interested in insect behaviour, communication, chronotoxicolgy and the botanical control of pests.