A predictive model of the density of airborne insects in agricultural environments

Grüebler, Martin U.; Morand, Muriel; Naef‐Daenzer, Beat

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2007.05.001

Cited by 115 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

124

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Simultaneously, these results may indicate on exploitation by feeding Barn Swallows in different habitats, and available insects, including gregariously swarming small dipterans and hymenopterans (discussed in [19,49]). The significant differences in the diet of Barn Swallows between neighouring breeding sites revealed by our study (Figure 2) can be interpreted in several ways, mainly as local availability of different taxonomic groups of insects, the progress of breeding season, habitat and crop composition and weather conditions [17][18][19][20][21][49][50][51], however all these factors could be closely related. Furthermore, we believe that other important factors explaining the food composition are farm animals, mainly cattle, which are suggested to be a main variable associated with the number of breeding populations of foraging Barn Swallows in agricultural areas of north-western Europe [7][8][9][10][11][46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet of nestling Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica in rural areas of Poland

Orłowski

Karg

2011

Open Life Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Analysis of faecal sacs of nestling Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica from 52 breeding colonies located within fifteen spatially-separated villages in Poland has revealed that the basic component of the diet was Coleoptera (56.1% of all identified prey items), followed by Hymenoptera (24.1%), Diptera (16.1%) and Hemiptera (3.3%). The average mass of all prey items with known weight amounted to 3.40 mg (95% CL, 3.16–3.63 mg; median=0.49 mg) dry weight. Coleopterans associated with dung and manure jointly made up 23.5% of the number and 24.3% of the total biomass of all representatives of the order. Statistically significant negative relationships between the average weight of prey and number of prey found in 52 analyzed breeding sites suggest a particular need for Barn Swallows to find larger-bodied prey rather than to exploit the local abundance of smaller prey. The high percentage of Coleoptera in the diet of nestling Barn Swallows probably results from extensive or traditional farm management based on rules of organic farming in agricultural areas of central Europe, mainly commonly used organic fertilizers, and suggests the importance of these insects as a more easily accessible and larger-bodied prey in comparison to some small Diptera or Hymenoptera. We believe that a large number of randomly collected faecal samples from tens of breeding sites allow us to precisely describe variation in the diet of the Barn Swallow. Our work has great importance for documenting of the food composition of the Barn Swallow in traditional European countrysides, i.e. under environmental and agricultural conditions which, as a result of transformations of the system of farming, ceased to exist in the western and northern part of this continent.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet of nestling Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica in rural areas of Poland

Orłowski

Karg

2011

Open Life Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our sensors must be placed somewhere in space and time, and this spatiotemporal data offers potentially useful features [8]. In essence, the spatiotemporal features change the prior probability of a particular species appearance in our sensor streams, and we can incorporate such information into our model.…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Automatic Classification on Flying Insects Using Inexpensive Sensors

Batista

Hao

Keogh

et al. 2011

2011 10th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications and Workshops

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract-Insects are intimately connected to human life and wellbeing, in both positive and negative senses. While it is estimated that insects pollinate at least two-thirds of the all food consumed by humans, malaria, a disease transmitted by the female mosquito of the Anopheles genus, kills approximately one million people per year. Due to the importance of insects to humans, researchers have developed an arsenal of mechanical, chemical, biological and educational tools to help mitigate insects harmful effects, and to enhance their beneficial effects. However, the efficiency of such tools depends on knowing the time and location of migrations/infestations/population as early as possible.Insect detection and counting is typically performed by means of traps, usually "sticky traps", which are regularly collected and manually analyzed. The main problem is that this procedure is expensive in terms of materials and human time, and creates a lag between the time the trap is placed and inspected. This lag may only be a week, but in the case of say, mosquitoes or sand flies, this can be more than half their adult life span.We are developing an inexpensive optical sensor that uses a laser beam to detect, count and ultimately classify flying insects from distance. Our objective is to use classification techniques to provide accurate real-time counts of disease vectors down to the species/sex level. This information can be used by public health workers, government and non-government organizations to plan the optimal intervention strategies in the face of limited resources.In this work, we present some preliminary results of our research, conducted with three insect species. We show that using our simple sensor we can accurately classify these species using their wing-beat frequency as feature. We further discuss how we can augment the sensor with other sources of information in order to scale our ideas to classify a larger number of species.

show abstract

“…Nocturnal activity patterns of bats are considered to be synchronized with insect activity peaks resulting from variation in temperatures and light levels [31]. The densities and activity of airborne arthropod prey are related to meteorological factors such as wind and air temperature [32,33]. The abundance and distribution of insects can change on short timescales within homogeneous habitat patches [34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prey field switching based on preferential behaviour can induce Lévy flights

Lundy

Harrison

Buckley

et al. 2013

J. R. Soc. Interface.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using the foraging movements of an insectivorous bat, Myotis mystacinus, we describe temporal switching of foraging behaviour in response to resource availability. These observations conform to predictions of optimized search under the Lévy flight paradigm. However, we suggest that this occurs as a result of a preference behaviour and knowledge of resource distribution. Preferential behaviour and knowledge of a familiar area generate distinct movement patterns as resource availability changes on short temporal scales. The behavioural response of predators to changes in prey fields can elicit different functional responses, which are considered to be central in the development of stable predator -prey communities. Recognizing how the foraging movements of an animal relate to environmental conditions also elucidates the evolution of optimized search and the prevalence of discrete strategies in natural systems. Applying techniques that use changes in the frequency distribution of movements facilitates exploration of the processes that underpin behavioural changes.

show abstract

A predictive model of the density of airborne insects in agricultural environments

Cited by 115 publications

References 28 publications

Diet of nestling Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica in rural areas of Poland

Diet of nestling Barn Swallows Hirundo rustica in rural areas of Poland

Towards Automatic Classification on Flying Insects Using Inexpensive Sensors

Prey field switching based on preferential behaviour can induce Lévy flights

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About