A comprehensive account of insect migration in its ecological and evolutionary context.

A review of the problems of monitoring and control still posed by locusts, grasshoppers, moths and blackfly, in the light of progress made since the 1977 Royal Society Discussion Meeting on Strategy and Tactics of Control of Migrant Pests.

Knowledge of the flight behaviour of migrant insect pests is essential for an understanding of their population dynamics, which in turn determine the design of efficient management strategies. This bulletin provides a detailed review of the development of radar entomology, spanning the last 30 years, and its contribution to the study of major insect pests of agriculture and human health in the developing world. Pests include grasshoppers and locusts, the African armyworm, rice brown planthopper and other rice pests, the old world bollworm and some mosquito vectors of human diseases.

Migrant insect pests represent a constant threat to crops and to health in many parts of the world. In Africa alone, over $100 million is spent annually on the control of a half dozen species of locust. One of the key problems in combating migrant pests is that the insect can disappear for months at a time and reappear with catastrophic effect. With the aid of aircraft and radar, it has been possible to map the movements of migrant pests. The research in this book, carried out on an international scale, has shown that migrant pests can travel longer distances than previously suspected and that their movements are related to the dynamics of the winds and weather systems. These findings throw new light on the flight behavior of the insects as well as on the ecological and evolutionary aspects of flight migration and suggest new options for controlling pests, especially locusts and grasshoppers. In surveying the achievements in this area, the author provides the biologist with an introduction to the relevant aspects of meteorology.