Phenology and Seasonal Modeling in Insects

Abstract

Insects exhibit a wide variety of seasonal adaptations. Studies of seasonality in insects have generally considered whole populations rather than repeated observations of individuals. The reason for this approach is that insects, as a rule, are small, short-lived, and extremely abundant. Insects are therefore more cryptic, more ephemeral, and are potentially endowed with much greater genetic variability than most plants or vertebrates. The importance of these attributes in phenological studies cannot be overemphasized. In different seasons of the same year or during the same season of successive years, one can expect to find individuals and gene frequencies which are significantly different from those encountered in prior sample populations. Consequently, the insect phenologist may deal with greater variation in the timing of a phenophase or in the extent of population growth than a phenologist concerned with plants or vertebrates. Seasonal models of insect populations will reflect this greater variation by exhibiting greater variance or lower confidence limits in their prediction of future events than will models concerning plants or vertebrates.

Research supported by the University of Oregon’s Office of Scientific and Scholarly Research. Thanks to Philip Lounibos and Christina Holzapfel for their help with the manuscript