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Food Mixing Strategies in the Desert Locust: Effects of Phase, Distance Between Foods, and Food Nutrient Content by Brenda van der Zee; Spencer T. Behmer; Stephen J. Simpson is a Agricultural and Biological Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Abstract Food mixing strategies were compared in the cryptically coloured, relatively sedentary ‘solitarious’ and the highly mobile, conspicuously coloured ‘gregarious’ phases of the desert locust, __Schistocerca gregaria__. Based on phase related differences in behaviour and nutritional regulatory responses, we predicted that solitarious nymphs, compared to gregarious nymphs, would move less between nutritionally complementary foods, particularly as the distance between the foods increased. We manipulated the nutritional composition [protein (p) and digestible carbohydrate (c) content] of two foods in an experimental arena and varied the distance between the foods using a factorial experimental design. Results indicated that in general, solitarious nymphs showed greater fidelity to individual food dishes than did gregarious insects (i.e., they concentrated their feeding mainly on one dish). However, results also demonstrated that for both phases fidelity to a particular food dish increased as the distance between the dishes increased, and that the number of switches between dishes decreased with increasing distance. In the smallest arenas, though, gregarious nymphs switched mor

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Author

Brenda van der Zee; Spencer T. Behmer; Stephen J. Simpson

Publisher

Springer; Wiley (Blackwell Publishing); Blackwell Publishing Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 0013-8703)

Published

2002

Language

EN

Field

Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)