Leaf Eating Pests

 

Information

• Leaf eating pests are insect that chew or consume plant tissue
• Natural insect repellent can be used in some cases
• Finding holes in the leaves of a plant means its sometimes easier to identify the creature/pest

 



• Sawflies chew holes that don't go all the way through the leaf, making it look intact but transplant. they have to killed by insecticides.

Sawflies

• Leaf miners burrow twisting tunnels across leaves another one to use insecticides against

Leaf Miners

• Sucking insects poke tiny holes in to leaves drawing the nutrition out of them. some examples includes aphids, squash bugs and spider mites. sucking insects can breed rapidly therefore you must act rapidly in order to get fully rid of the pests.

Spider Mites

• Slugs and snails will also feed on the plant leaves. However this is normally controlled by the natural food chain

Snail and Slug

Other animals:

• Wood Pigeon
• Ducks
• Geese
• Rabbits
• Hares
• Small rodents
• Deer

The 3 Strategies of survial

K- Strategist

• Stable environments are labelled by species with a K-strategy

Such animals tend to large, long-lived and invest a large amount of energy into rearing their offspring ensuring they have a higher survival rate.

Elephants are within the  K -species as they rear for their young to induce a higher survival rate therefore most of their energy is placed into that instead of surviving the unstable conditions they have adapted to K-strategist.

Population levels tend to remain stable

(More related to mortality then environmental influences)

R- Strategist

• Fluctuating Environments are labelled by species in the R-strategy

These tend to be small, short-lived species. whom invest all their energy in producing more offspring then the K species, the population density can get low due to parental care being minimum.



Mice are within the R-strategy as they have so many offspring that minimum care can be giving to all off the offspring from the mother therefore she actually produces a low density due to deaths at young ages.

Low survival rates but tend to maximum use of temporary environments

A table showing the Differences between R and K;

 

Table show the differences between R and K

The graph above shows lifespans of fish which is a R species therefore has a short lifespan but higher density (Blue line) and Dugongs which is a K species which population level tends to remain high therefore it lives longer (red line)

Bet-Hedging

• Bet-hedging strategies alter strategies according to their environment

some spread their life histories over variables time periods, others respond to their environments by laying eggs and then moving on.





the graph above shows how bet hedging works the growth of the plants is unpredictable by fitness as the plant is using mechanisms of change to survive in unpredictable circumstances.

PESTS! - MAINLY R-STRATEGISTS.

Reproductive stratgegy Theory of Pests

There is the theory that species adopt one of the 3 life strategies in order to survive in a stable and unstable environment.


either of the 3 strategies are below:

1. r-section
2. k-selection
3. bet-hedging

But, What is a Stable environment?

Well it is not the UK! Stable environments are those climates that are relatively constant or easily predictable in there weather and other areas as well for example the tropical rainforest has a constant temperature of around 5/6 degree and a known mist of fog. Therefore, this is a stable environment.




Temperature zones for the Rainforest live on the 27/04/2017

So, What is a Unstable environment?

This is more like the UK, it is an unpredictable environment which varies in it climates. as well as this there is disturbances in the temperature zones.

Temperature Zones for London showing rain in the evening live on 27/04/2017

Therefore Pests need to adapt to the environments by inhabiting to one of the 3 strategies above.






Go to the next Post to Find out more on the Strategies

Learned and Innate Behaviours

Compare the strengths and weakness of learned and innate behaviour in Wild Animals.

Innate; Advantage of Speed, No mistakes, Less need for parental care
Learned; Adaptability, Flexibility

Flash Memory example;
One trial learning, example; Bee and toad imprinting

Working Memory;
Looking for prey. Example; Eagle and Mouse

Non-declarative Memory;
Skills Memory, Example Human learning to ride a bike

Declarative Memory
Learning a fact about something.


Types of Learning;

Non-Associative - habituation

Association;
- Imprinting
- Classical conditioning
- Operant Conditioning


THE SIMPLEST FORM OF LEARNING IS HABITUATION;

-Reduced response to constant or repetitive stimulus
-Makes sense from an information theory perspective
-Different from sensory adaptation
- In simple organisms the neural mechanism is pretty well understood