Abstract
THERE are two aspects of the regulation of animal numbers: first, how the numbers in a population are controlled around a mean level over a number of generations and second, how this mean level is determined. Studies on the dynamics of insect populations leading to the construction of life tables are frequently confined to a particular location where the fecundity and mortality of successive generations are estimated1–3, and this approach emphasises the first aspect. Varley1 appreciated the value of obtaining permanent traces of the insects as they passed from one instar to another (galls, emergence holes, exuviae), since such direct counts of the numbers entering an instar avoided the time-consuming and inaccurate process of integrating successive estimates of population size4. The traces are analogous to a natural accumulative trap. Beaver5 and Danks6 used this ‘trace’ method for bark beetles and various solitary Aculeata. Freeman7 extended the trace method to accumulated generations at each of several sites, an approach which emphasises the second aspect of population dynamics.
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References
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FREEMAN, B. A spatial approach to insect population dynamics. Nature 260, 240–241 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/260240a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/260240a0
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