Abstract

ABSTRACT Insects and other animals sometimes modify behavior in response to changes in atmospheric pressure, an environmental cue that can provide warning of potentially injurious windy and rainy weather. To determine if Diaphorina citri (Hemiptera: Liviidae) calling, mate-seeking, and phototaxis behaviors were affected by atmospheric pressure, we conducted analyses to correlate responsiveness with pressure trends over periods up to 48 h before laboratory bioassays. Mean responsiveness increased or decreased depending on the magnitudes and directions of pressure changes measured over different periods up to 24 h before bioassays, and changed differently in calling and mate-seeking bioassays than in phototaxis bioassays. For example, mean responsiveness decreased in mating behavior bioassays but increased in phototaxis bioassays when atmospheric pressure changed more than one standard deviation over a 24-h period. Such a result is consistent with a hypothesis that there may be survival benefits to focusing...

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