CATDOLL : CATDOLL: What does a locust look like?

1. What are the characteristics of locusts?

The body color of locusts is green or yellow-brown. They have antennae, eyes, and mouthparts on their heads. Their compound eyes are located in the upper part of the head, one on each side. They are relatively large and consist of many small eyes. They are the main visual organs. They also have two pairs of wings. The forewings are leathery, narrow and have a protective function. The hind wings are soft and wide, suitable for flying.

The pair of antennae on the head are organs that combine smell and touch. Its chewing mouthparts have a pair of well-developed jaws with teeth, which can bite off the stems and leaves of plants.

2. What are the appearance and living habits of grasshoppers?

1. Appearance

Grasshoppers are also known as locusts. The adult body is 80 to 100 mm long, usually green or yellowish brown. The male is small and the female is large, with light red vertical stripes on the back. The middle ridge, side ridges and ventral edge of the pronotum are light red. The forewings are green or withered grass color, with light red stripes along the elbow vein area, or dark brown vertical stripes on the midrib, and the hind wings are light green.

2. Living habits

Adults have the same diet as nymphs, both are herbivorous. They use their chewing mouthparts to bite notches and holes in plant leaves and flower buds. Some species are oligophagous pests, such as the East Asian migratory locust, which only feeds on plants in the Gramineae and Cyperaceae families; some species are polyphagous, such as the large-winged grasshopper.

Both adults and locust nymphs hide at night and come out during the day, and have no obvious phototaxis.

3. What do locusts look like?

Locusts are insects with incomplete metamorphosis, including three stages: egg, nymph, and adult. Adults: Male adults are 35.5~41.5mm long, and female adults are 39.5~51.2mm long. The body is usually green or yellowish brown, and often varies due to environmental factors. The face is vertical, and the antennae are light yellow. The pronotum has a well-developed ridge in the middle, which is slightly arc-shaped when viewed from the side in the solitary type and slightly concave in the gregarious type, and there are often dark vertical stripes on both sides.

The forewings are narrow and long, often exceeding the middle of the hind tibia, with brown and dark spots, which are darker in the gregarious type. The hind wings are colorless and transparent. The gregarious type sometimes has two inconspicuous dark stripes on the upper side of the hind femur, which are often absent or inconspicuous in the solitary type. The hind tibia is usually orange-red, which is slightly lighter in the gregarious type, and usually has 10 to 11 spines along the outer edge.

4. What is the appearance of the locust in Insect Diary?

Roughly, it is usually light green, but some are turquoise, light yellow, reddish brown, and even gray like the adult. Its prothorax is obviously streamlined, with round teeth, small white spots, and many warts. The hind legs are as strong and powerful as those of adult locusts, decorated with red lines, and the long upper legs have double-sided serrations.

5. What are the characteristics of locusts?

We all know that the three major agricultural natural disasters are floods, droughts and locust plagues. As an insect, the disasters they cause to agricultural production can be ranked on par with floods and droughts. It has to be said that locusts are indeed terrible!

We have all seen locusts, which are no more than two inches long and weigh no more than 10 grams. However, they reproduce in astonishing numbers and can migrate everywhere for food. They can gather into large groups of more than one million, forming a huge "locust army". When they fly together, they cover the sky and the sun, like a dark cloud sweeping across the sky. So how do these "locust armies" gather together? How can they migrate everywhere on such a large scale?

Biologists have always been very curious about why locusts gather together to fly. Not long ago, the media reported that researchers from China Agricultural University successfully deciphered the "assembly order" of the "locust army". What is surprising is that the assembly order is related to their excrement.

As early as 2005, researchers from the Agricultural University discovered that the excrement of locusts was related to their assembly commands. The research experts used the East Asian migratory locust (the most common locust in my country) as the research and experimental object, and carried out the deciphering of the "assembly command". They found that the reason they gathered together was not just to find food, but the more important purpose was to mate and reproduce. It can also be said that they gathered together for the continuation of the species.

However, experts from the Agricultural University did not find any organs for emitting collective information on the bodies of locusts, not even their antennae. Locusts do not rely on antennae to transmit information, and the vibration of their wings when flying does not mean anything. Later, experts discovered the secret from the locust's feces.

Locusts can emit sex pheromones, and their antennae also have organs specifically for receiving sex pheromones. However, their sex pheromones are not aggregation pheromones, but rather the communication and acceptance of mating intentions. This once puzzled experts. Later, experts diluted the locust feces with water and then filtered it. They found that the chemical smell released could cause locusts to gather. At the same time, experts also found an organ in the locust's antennae that receives aggregation pheromones, and this year they proved the relationship between the two through experiments.

This small discovery may have great practical value in agriculture. When a locust plague occurs in a certain place, this method may be used to gather the locusts to a certain place and then catch them all in one fell swoop.

Locusts are also a delicacy. Although they are an agricultural disaster insect, it is said in my country that "three locusts dare not fly together" for fear of being eaten by foodies. Therefore, large-scale "locust armies" are rare. This is because in recent decades, my country's agricultural production has been implemented in a refined management, and there are no extra river beaches and wastelands for locust armies to form. Therefore, it is difficult for locusts to form on a large scale in my country. Two years ago, a locust plague broke out in Weifang, Shandong. However, it was eliminated before the foodies arrived. In fact, it was also because of their small scale. The local agricultural department sprayed pesticides and quickly eliminated the locusts.

However, in May of this year, a large army of locusts formed in Africa. They spread eastward, sweeping across the Somali Plateau in North Africa, the Nile River Basin in Egypt, the Iranian Plateau in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and reached several states in western and southern India. After fighting for thousands of kilometers, they were not effectively eliminated. This shows how strong the locusts' reproductive capacity, vitality and environmental adaptability are. No wonder it is called the three major agricultural disasters together with floods and droughts.

6. What does a grasshopper look like?

Grasshoppers are usually yellow-brown or green in color. The adult female body length is 39.5 to 51.2 mm, and the male body length is 35.5 to 41.5 mm. The antennae are light yellow and face vertical. The midline of the pronotum is well developed, and it looks like an arc from the side, with dark vertical stripes often appearing on both sides. The forewings are relatively long, and the hind wings are colorless. The main structures of the head are the mouthparts, antennae, and eyes. The antennae are sensory organs that mainly serve the sense of smell and touch. The eyes have a pair of compound eyes and three simple eyes.

The abdomen is composed of 11 segments, and the thorax is divided into the metathorax, prothorax and mesothorax.

7. What are the common types of locusts?

There are ground locusts, rice locusts, East Asian migratory locusts, cotton locusts, bamboo locusts

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1. Earth locust

The common locusts include the stupid locust, the short-winged locust, the black-backed locust, and the sharp-winged locust. They are a type of locust, slightly similar in shape to migratory locusts, and are widely distributed, mostly living on high hills, embankments, and fields in mountainous slopes and low-lying plains.

In addition to harming food crops, they can also harm cotton, vegetables, etc. However, they do not fly in groups and rarely fly to distant areas, so they are less harmful than migratory locusts.

2. Rice locust

Rice locust is a general term for all species of insects in the order Orthoptera, family Acrididae, and genus Oxya. There are 14 species distributed in my country, including the toothless rice locust, mountain rice locust, pseudo-mountainous rice locust, Chinese rice locust, and Hainan rice locust.