Agent-based and continuous models of hopper bands for the Australian plague locust: How resource consumption mediates pulse formation and geometry.

ABSTRACT: Locusts are significant agricultural pests. Under favorable environmental conditions flightless juveniles may aggregate into coherent, aligned swarms referred to as hopper bands. These bands are often observed as a propagating wave having a dense front with rapidly decreasing density in the wake. A tantalizing and common observation is that these fronts slow and steepen in the presence of green vegetation. This suggests the collective motion of the band is mediated by resource consumption. Our goal is to model and quantify this effect. We focus on the Australian plague locust, for which excellent field and experimental data is available. Exploiting the alignment of locusts in hopper bands, we concentrate solely on the density variation perpendicular to the front. We develop two models in t

SUBMITTER: Bernoff AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7224576 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature