Most people may not know much about grasshoppers, and even eliminate them as pests, in fact, it is a predatory insect, it feeds on a variety of agricultural pests, and in some places it reproduces and releases grasshoppers in large quantities, which can be used as a biological control means to kill insects and achieve good results.
Grass Ridge is also known as Grass Dragonfly, and the larvae are called Aphid Lion. It belongs to the order Pulphaloptera of the insect order. In the world, there are 86 genera with a total of 1350 species, and the common ones in China are large grasshoppers, licaoflies (small grasshoppers), Chinese grassflies, leafy grassflies, Asian and African grassflies, etc. Because grasshoppers can effectively prey on a variety of agricultural pests that cause devastation in large quantities, it is an important natural enemy of various types of aphids such as pine aphids, willow aphids, peach aphids, pear aphids and pine dry aphids, which play an effective role in inhibiting the growth of aphid aphid shell populations in forest nursery orchard farmland. Therefore, the artificial use of grasshoppers to eliminate pests has been widely carried out.
First, the morphological characteristics of grasshoppers
Grass ridges are all-metamorphosed insects with four different forms of adults, larvae, eggs and pupae throughout their lives.
(1) Adult insects: medium,slender, and weak in body shape, and the general insect body and wing veins are mostly green. Chewable mouthpiece. The antennae are slender. Linear. The compound eye is well developed and has a metallic luster. Dark brown markings are common on the head, distinguished by labial spots, buccal spots, middle spots, supraangular spots, subangular spots, and posterior head spots, and the number and location of head spots are characteristic of the species. The wings are two pairs, membranous and transparent, and the shape and veining of the anterior and posterior wings are similar, and the veins are thin and often mesh-like, and bifurcated at the edges.
(2) Larvae: mostly spindle-shaped, body color is usually yellow-brown, gray-brown or russet-brown. There are black-brown markings on the head, the mouthparts are a pair of powerful curved tubes, the front mouth is type, and there are hairs of different sizes in each section of the chest. There are three pairs of developed pectoral feet, and the larvae are active in action.
(3) Pupa: naked pupa, yellow-green, oval, about 12mm long, curled in a white silky cocoon.
(4) Egg: oval, about 1mm in diameter, generally green or grass green, the base of the egg has a elastic silk stalk with a silk handle, attached to the branches and leaves of the plant and the bark.
For example, in the peak egg laying period of cotton bollworms, 30,000 to 50,000 grasshopper eggs are released per acre of cotton field, and the grasshopper larvae hatched from the eggs can prey on the pests, and the effect is very significant after four days.
Second, the amount of food and methods
Grasshoppers are grass pupae in the egg stage and pupal stage can not be eaten, predation is mainly in the larval and adult stages, especially in the larval stage of the large amount of predation, is the main period of pest elimination. Grasshopper larvae are ugly and fierce predators, aphid lions prey on pests or eggs, and each aphid lion can suck one hundred and ten aphids a day. The feeding efficiency of grasshoppers is very high, and 1 large grasshopper larvae can prey on 600 to 700 aphids of various types in its lifetime, and adults can prey on about 500. An ordinary grasshopper larvae can prey on 300 to 400 aphids and more than 1,000 leaf mites in a lifetime, and more than 3,000 mesophylls if they prey on mesophylls. On average, 1 to 3 instar larvae of the Chinese grasshopper can prey on 300, 439 and 719 hawthorn leaf mites per day, respectively.
The main weapon of the aphid lions is the upper and lower jaws that are born in front of the head, and whenever they find a target, they open their upper and lower jaws and clamp the target tightly. There are fine grooves on the upper and lower jaws that can make the digestive juice flow to the pest body, and the liquid that can dissolve the pest's body flows down the fine groove on the jaw to the pest body, and the tissues of the pest body will be dissolved, and the dissolved liquid will immediately be sucked into the stomach by the aphid lion. In this way, a pest ended up with only an empty shell. The feeding habits of adult grasshoppers have changed, such as Chinese grasshoppers, Asian and African grasshoppers, etc. to change carnivorous to plant-feeding, they are like bees and butterflies, flying in the flowers, sucking on plant pollen and honeydew. At this time, they lose the ability to eliminate pests, while other species of grasshoppers adhere to the meat-eating habit and still feed on pests, such as large grasshoppers, lily grasshoppers, etc., and can still eat more than a hundred aphids a day on average.
3. Predators
In addition to insects and mites that prey on a variety of soft bodies, they also eat honeydew excreted by insects, secretions of plant nectar glands, and pollen. As a predatory predator in nature, grasshoppers can effectively control insect pests such as aphids, aphids, and some pest mites, but also prey on a small number of beneficial insects, such as diptera aphids (eggs and larvae) and puldpoles (larvae and pupae), and can even kill each other.
Fourth, the control role of grasshoppers
Grasshoppers and their larvae are important natural enemies of aphids and a variety of agricultural pests. The advantage of its control effect is high safety, reducing the use of chemical pesticides and not producing any environmental pollution. At the same time, the extensiveness and persistence of grasshoppers have established a strong biological population, providing a sustainable protective net for the prevention and control of various insect pests in farmland. However, grasshoppers are sensitive to organophosphorus, and some pesticides have less lethal effect on adult grasshoppers, but can lead to infertility of adults, which have a strong lethal effect on larvae and eggs, and some pesticides have a strong lethal effect on adults. When using grasshoppers to control agricultural pests, we should pay attention to the use of pesticides to avoid threatening the natural enemy grasshoppers. If you see an insect like grasshoppers in an orchard, don't use it as a pest anymore.
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