Feeding activity of the East African millipede Omopyge sudanica Kraus on different crop products in laboratory experiments

Abstract

Millipedes can cause considerable damage in the production of sweet potato and some other crops in East Africa. Quantitative information on intake of crop diets by and body weight gain of millipedes was collected in short-term no-choice feeding activity laboratory experiments conducted in north-eastern Uganda using female millipedes of the species Omopyge sudanica. Diets consisted of sweet potato and cassava storage root material, groundnut seeds, or maize grains. Differences in intake and body weight gain between diets were not statistically different. The consumption index, i.e., the ratio between intake and body weight gain, was significantly higher for sweet potato than for most other diets. The efficiency of conversion of ingested food, i.e., 100 × the ratio between body weight gain and intake, was significantly lower for the root crops — especially sweet potato — than for the grain crops. The research showed how difficult it is to obtain reliable, quantitative data on the feeding habits of millipedes, but also illustrated that O. sudanica can cause harm to crops in north-eastern Uganda and elsewhere in East Africa.