The Relationships Among Longitude, Latitude and Elevation of Occurrence of Parocneria orienta Chao (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) in China

Abstract

Parocneria orienta Chao (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) is the primary defoliator of members of the conifer family Cupressaceae in China. Research is needed to identify the geographic distribution of P. orienta and its major areas of occurrence and to formulate measures for early warning, monitoring and control of this pest. Data on the occurrence P. orienta were collected from 4,688 monitoring sites in Sichuan Province, China from 2012 to 2016. Analyses of the spatial distribution and model fit were carried out using ArcGIS and Matlab software. We found that the occurrence of P. orienta complied with a normal distribution law (α = 1% confidence level) in terms of longitude and latitude and belonged to a generalized extreme-value distribution (α = 1% confidence level) in terms of elevation. According to the double factor variance analysis taking year-month as the time variance and longitude, latitude and elevation as the space variance, the hazard centroid shifted significantly by 6 minutes of longitude in March (105°46′37″E) and July (105°40′30″E) of the same year. The regions of greatest damage by P. orienta were located in eastern and southeastern parts of Sichuan Province (105.7°E–31.1°N, elevation 400 m), an area that features plains and low mountains with lush vegetation and abundant Cupressus funebris individuals.