Search behaviour: strategies and outcomes

Abstract

How an insect goes about finding its way to a food item or an oviposition site and starts to use it, has traditionally been divided into a number of stages. The commonest classification of the stages, following the parasitoid literature, is probably into habitat-finding, host-finding, host recognition, host acceptance, and host suitability. A much broader operational subdivision which has proved very useful for flying insects is into “pre-alighting” and “post-alighting” responses. The main advantage of this broader separation is that it avoids the problem of trying to define functional transitions — for example, when recognition stops and acceptance starts. Although the process is subdivided, an examination of the literature reveals that the greatest emphasis has been on the later stages; that is, on host recognition and acceptance, and on post-alighting responses. This emphasis is not surprising, for two reasons: