Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.

Locusts are short horned grasshoppers that exhibit two behaviour types depending on their local population density. These are: solitarious, where they will actively avoid other locusts, and gregarious where they will seek them out. It is in this gregarious state that locusts can form massive and des...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales:	Fillipe Georgiou, Jerome Buhl, J E F Green, Bishnu Lamichhane, Ngamta Thamwattana
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/c8a904d1cfb349e8aba635849f14624a
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:c8a904d1cfb349e8aba635849f14624a
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:c8a904d1cfb349e8aba635849f14624a2021-12-02T19:57:34ZModelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.1553-734X1553-735810.1371/journal.pcbi.1008353https://doaj.org/article/c8a904d1cfb349e8aba635849f14624a2021-07-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008353https://doaj.org/toc/1553-734Xhttps://doaj.org/toc/1553-7358Locusts are short horned grasshoppers that exhibit two behaviour types depending on their local population density. These are: solitarious, where they will actively avoid other locusts, and gregarious where they will seek them out. It is in this gregarious state that locusts can form massive and destructive flying swarms or plagues. However, these swarms are usually preceded by the aggregation of juvenile wingless locust nymphs. In this paper we attempt to understand how the distribution of food resources affect the group formation process. We do this by introducing a multi-population partial differential equation model that includes non-local locust interactions, local locust and food interactions, and gregarisation. Our results suggest that, food acts to increase the maximum density of locust groups, lowers the percentage of the population that needs to be gregarious for group formation, and decreases both the required density of locusts and time for group formation around an optimal food width. Finally, by looking at foraging efficiency within the numerical experiments we find that there exists a foraging advantage to being gregarious.Fillipe GeorgiouJerome BuhlJ E F GreenBishnu LamichhaneNgamta ThamwattanaPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleBiology (General)QH301-705.5ENPLoS Computational Biology, Vol 17, Iss 7, p e1008353 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
spellingShingle	Biology (General) QH301-705.5 Fillipe Georgiou Jerome Buhl J E F Green Bishnu Lamichhane Ngamta Thamwattana Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
description	Locusts are short horned grasshoppers that exhibit two behaviour types depending on their local population density. These are: solitarious, where they will actively avoid other locusts, and gregarious where they will seek them out. It is in this gregarious state that locusts can form massive and destructive flying swarms or plagues. However, these swarms are usually preceded by the aggregation of juvenile wingless locust nymphs. In this paper we attempt to understand how the distribution of food resources affect the group formation process. We do this by introducing a multi-population partial differential equation model that includes non-local locust interactions, local locust and food interactions, and gregarisation. Our results suggest that, food acts to increase the maximum density of locust groups, lowers the percentage of the population that needs to be gregarious for group formation, and decreases both the required density of locusts and time for group formation around an optimal food width. Finally, by looking at foraging efficiency within the numerical experiments we find that there exists a foraging advantage to being gregarious.
format	article
author	Fillipe Georgiou Jerome Buhl J E F Green Bishnu Lamichhane Ngamta Thamwattana
author_facet	Fillipe Georgiou Jerome Buhl J E F Green Bishnu Lamichhane Ngamta Thamwattana
author_sort	Fillipe Georgiou
title	Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
title_short	Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
title_full	Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
title_fullStr	Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
title_full_unstemmed	Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.
title_sort	modelling locust foraging: how and why food affects group formation.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/c8a904d1cfb349e8aba635849f14624a
work_keys_str_mv	AT fillipegeorgiou modellinglocustforaginghowandwhyfoodaffectsgroupformation AT jeromebuhl modellinglocustforaginghowandwhyfoodaffectsgroupformation AT jefgreen modellinglocustforaginghowandwhyfoodaffectsgroupformation AT bishnulamichhane modellinglocustforaginghowandwhyfoodaffectsgroupformation AT ngamtathamwattana modellinglocustforaginghowandwhyfoodaffectsgroupformation
_version_	1718375803942600704

Modelling locust foraging: How and why food affects group formation.

Ejemplares similares