Answer to Question #190817 in Zoology for EASWARI

Question

describe the phenomenon of migration in insects

Answer 1

Migration among the insects is best known in locusts and butterflies. A great number of other insects, however, including some of the smallest, are migrants. Broadly speaking, insect migration is of three types: some insects emigrate on one-way journeys to breed, others migrate from a breeding area to a feeding area, and still others migrate from breeding areas to hibernation sites.

In the first type, adults with a life span limited to a single season emigrate from their breeding site, deposit their eggs, and die. Such migratory flights can be very short or very long but, because they are always one-way journeys, cannot be regarded as migration in its strictest sense. The best-known examples of such flights are those of locusts, particularly the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), a species found in tropical and subtropical countries of the Old World.

In the second type of migration – migration in the strict sense – insects migrate from a breeding area to a feeding area. In the feeding area the females develop mature ovaries and then return to lay their eggs in the place from which they came or a similar region.

In the third type of migration, insects travel from their breeding areas to places where they hibernate or estivate – i.e., pass the summer in a dormant state. The place of hibernation or estivation may be outside the zone where climate permits breeding. The following season, they return to the breeding place and lay their eggs. This type of migration, which can involve great distances, is made by insects with unusually long life spans. The lives of these insects include a diapause, or period of dormancy during which development is suspended.