| Literature DB >> 28710446 |
Charlotte E Wainwright1, Phillip M Stepanian2, Don R Reynolds2,3, Andy M Reynolds2.
Abstract
In fine warm weather, the daytime convective atmosphere over land areas is full of small migrant insects, among them serious pests (e.g. some species of aphid), but also many beneficial species (e.g. natural enemies of pests). For many years intensive aerial trapping studies were the only way of determining the density profiles of these small insects, and for taxon-specific studies trapping is still necessary. However, if we wish to determine generic behavioural responses to air movements shown by small day-migrating insects as a whole, the combination of millimetre-wavelength 'cloud radars' and Doppler lidar now provides virtually ideal instrumentation. Here we examine the net vertical velocities of > 1 million insect targets, relative to the vertical motion of the air in which they are flying, as a succession of fair-weather convective cells pass over the recording site in Oklahoma, USA. The resulting velocity measurements are interpreted in terms of the flight behaviours of small insects. These behaviours are accounted for by a newly-developed Lagrangian stochastic model of weakly-flying insect movements in the convective boundary layer; a model which is consistent with classic characterisations of small insect aerial density profiles. We thereby link patterns to processes.Entities:
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Year: 2017 PMID: 28710446 PMCID: PMC5511248 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-04503-0
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Sci Rep ISSN: 2045-2322 Impact factor: 4.379
Figure 1An example case from 12 August 2015. Panel (a) shows a time-height profile of reflectivity from the radar, while (b) presents the atmospheric vertical motion, w , measured by the Doppler lidar. Panel (c) shows the vertical motion recorded by the radar, w . For panels (b) and (c) blue colours represent downward motion and red upward motion. The dashed vertical lines in panels (a)–(c) indicate local sunrise and sunset while the solid vertical lines show the cessation and onset of civil twilight. The lower two panels (d) and (e) present a magnified view of the reflectivity and vertical air motion fields outlined by the white boxes in (a) and (b).
Figure 2Observed difference between the vertical velocities of small insects and the surrounding airstream in the fully-developed convective boundary layer, based on 29,343 data points. The solid black line indicates the quadratic best fit to the data. The fit was performed using a quadratic linear regression. The parameter standard errors and p-values are 0.0022 (p = 0) for the w 2 term, 0.0022 (p ≪ 10−4) for the w term and 0.0016 (p ≪ 10−4) for the intercept. The root mean squared error corresponding to the fit is 0.31 m s−1 and the R 2 value is 0.086.
Figure 3Predicted difference between the vertical velocities of aphid-size (~0.5 mg) insects and the surrounding airstream in the middle of a convective boundary layer. The magnitude of the response is dependent upon the aerial density profile, the convective velocity scale (surface heat flux), and acceleration autocorrelation timescale. The shape of the response curve is determined by the statistical properties of the turbulence (Eqs 5 and 6) which are common to all convective boundary layers.