Field Observations of the Sheltering Behavior of the Solitarious Phase of the Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, with Particular Reference to Antipredator Strategies

Adult Desert Locust Swarms, Schistocerca gregaria, Preferentially Roost in the Tallest Plants at Any Given Site in the Sahara Desert

“…In our previous studies we measured all the plants within transects to examine plant size and locust group levels [31,33], but this was time consuming. In the present study, we determined the maximum length, width, and height of individuals of the dominant plant species at four survey sites within a strait belt transect until obtaining enough sample size, according to Maeno et al [31]. At least 35 individuals or, whenever possible, all plants were measured and all data were pooled and analyzed to calculate mean size.…”

“…We have previously observed that marching gregarious nymphs of S. gregaria also selectively roosted on the largest trees in the local plant community and plant height rather than width and volume was the primary cue for night-roosting plant choice [33]. Solitarious adults and gregarious adults at relatively low densities, and even solitarious nymphs, used relatively larger plants as their night-roosting sites [25,26,31]. These results suggest that S. gregaria tend to use relatively larger night-roosting plants irrespective of population density, developmental stage, and phase.…”

“…Habitats of S. gregaria are diverse in terms of topography and plant communities, including vast plains with a variety of soil types such as rocky dry soils, dunes, and playas [27][28][29]. Some areas lack large trees and only have small bushes [30,31]. Highly mobile swarms of S. gregaria could encounter a variety of plant communities during migration [6,21,32], thus it is likely that they sometimes cannot reach favorable plant communities until night.…”