Dispersal of adult grasshoppers, Mecostethus magister, under the field condition

Abstract

SummaryEstimation of the number of adult grasshoppers, Mecostethus magister, was made by means of the mark‐and‐recapture method. The birth and death rates are possible to be estimated at the same time, but the immigration and the emigration rate are inevitably involved in these respectively. The immigration and emigration rates must be made clear to know the true birth and death rates. For this purpose the movement of the marked males in 1963 was analyzed.The grasshoppers dominantly moved in the directions of N, NW and W, and the difference in frequency among the movement directions was not so large. The distribution of the dispersal‐distance relationship of each quadrate on each released day was fitted approximately to normal distribution. It could be concluded that almost all of the grasshoppers moved within the range of about 31–35m. The emigration rate from the quadrate (12×12m2) was about 0.73–0.77 and the difference in the rate among the released days was small. From these values the emigration rate from the station (84×60m2) was estimated as 0.21–0.23.Subtracting the emigration rate from the death‐and‐emigration rate, the true death rate was calculated. The death rate was very low until the number of males reached to the peak, then increased gradually. Supposing that immigration rate was equal to the emigration rate, the true birth rate was also estimated. But the presumption might not be pertinent, for the value of birth rates became negative.