What do Orthoptera locusts eat to grow up? Is it a pest or a beneficial insect? Who is the natural enemy? What's the difference between a locust and a grasshopper?

Locusts, also known as grasshoppers, are a pest of the family Orthoptera, with many species, but East Asian migratory locusts are relatively common in China, and they are very harmful. When they are serious, they can cause locusts. What do locusts eat to grow up? Who is the natural enemy? What's the difference between a locust and a grasshopper?

What do you eat to grow up?

1. Wild locusts

Locusts have large mouths and developed jaws, feed on plant leaves and like to eat thick leaves, such as sweet potato, hollow cabbage, cabbage and other vegetables, as well as corn, wheat, sorghum, millet, rice, sorghum, barley and other crops. Reed, barnyardgrass, white grass, Bermudagrass, shrimp grass, Salicornia mandshurica and some Artemisia plants.

2. Breeding locusts

Grasshopper culture feed from a wide range of sources, the main plant is mainly Gramineae plants, the best feed is a variety of monocotyledonous and pointed-leaf grass, or their own ryegrass and Mexican corn grass. If there is not enough grass, you can feed less bran or bran feed, just wet it with water and sprinkle it in the shed, but this is only a last resort.

Is it a beneficial insect or a pest?

Locusts are absolute pests, with green plant stems and leaves as the staple food in the adult stage, because they lay a large number of eggs, so once the climate of the first year is suitable, a plague of locusts may occur in the next year, covering the sky all over the country, blocking the sun, and magnificent. The green in the field disappears, there is no harvest in the field, and taking care of birds can restrain the plague of locusts.

Who is the natural enemy?

1. Spiders

Spiders are distributed all over the world except Antarctica, mostly feeding on insects, other spiders and polypods. For spiders, the locusts that bump into their traps are not much different from flies and mosquitoes.

2. Birds

The birds that eat locusts are plover, white-winged floating gull, field wren and so on, especially the plover. Birds that eat locusts need to prey on a large number of locusts at the brooding stage. Take ordinary swallows as an example, a pair of parent birds and a litter of nestlings can eat more than 16200 locusts a month.

3. Frogs

Almost all frogs are natural enemies of locusts. Frogs and locusts live in the same type of ecological environment, and all lowlands, pits and ditches with reeds and weeds are good places to live. so frogs are the vanguard force that restricts the survival and reproduction of locusts. According to statistics, a frog can kill more than 10,000 pests in one summer, and a frog eats an average of 50 pests a day, with a maximum of 266. Even a clumsy toad can prey on nearly 10,000 pests in three months in summer. According to this calculation, as long as there is an average of one frog in two square meters of crop field, it will be enough to restrain the survival of the leapfrog.

4. Mantis

Mantis, also known as knife mantis, invertebrates, is a carnivorous insect. It is an important natural enemy of Chinese agriculture, forestry, fruit trees and ornamental plant pests. It can prey on more than 40 kinds of pests, such as flies, mosquitoes, locusts, moth butterflies and their larvae, exposed pupae and crickets, cicadas, migratory locusts, katydids and other large insects.

5. Lizard

Lizards, commonly known as four-legged snakes and snake aunts, are distributed all over the world, mostly in the tropics and subtropics, with diverse living environments, mainly terrestrial, arboreal, semi-aquatic and cave-dwelling in the soil, most of which feed on insects and a few species that feed on plants. Mainly prey on locusts in spring and summer.

The difference between grasshoppers and grasshoppers:

The insects of Acridoidea can be called locusts. Acridoidea consists of 8 families. The grasshoppers we usually refer to are locusts of the family Acrididae and grasshoppers of the genus Acrididae. (the order of classification used above is from large to small: general family-family-genus) to put it simply: grasshoppers cover a wide range, and grasshoppers are some groups of locusts. Locusts and grasshoppers are not scientific names, they are both common names, but the term grasshopper is more folk and is not used academically. It is academically recognized that locusts can be used, and it is very clear that they are insects of the family Acridoidea.