This study examined a non-insecticidal tactic for suppressing boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis grandis Boheman, damage to cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L

Although the movement of stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans (L.), has been studied, its extent and significance has been uncertain. On a local scale (<13 km), fly movement occurs between host animals and resting sites to feed and mate, mainly at on-farm locations where herbivorous livestock regularly congregate. Small numbers emigrate from livestock congregation sites in search of other hosts and oviposition substrate, mostly within 13 km) is mainly wind-driven by weather fronts that carry stable flies from inland farm areas for up to 225 km to beaches of northwestern Florida and Lake Superior. Stable flies can reproduce for a short time each year in washed-up sea grass, but the beaches are not conducive to establishment. Such movement is passive and does not appear to be advantageous to stable fly's survival. On a regional scale, stable flies exhibit little genetic differentiation, and on the global scale, while there might be more than one “lineage”, the species is nevertheless considered to be panmictic. Population expansion across much of the globe likely occurred from the late Pleistocene to the early Holocene in association with the spread of domesticated nomad livestock and particularly with more sedentary, penned livestock.

Desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskål), began to exhibit gregarious behavior and amassed into swarms in the fall of 1992 along the Red Sea coast; successive generations of gregarious locusts over the next 18 mo gave rise to localized outbreaks west to Mauritania and east to India. Concurrent African migratory locust, Locusta migratoria migratorioides (Reiche ' Fairmaire), and tree locust, Anacridium melanorhodon (Walker) outbreaks compounded the locust infestations in the Horn of Africa. Evolution of the overall outbreak is described, including ways in which locusts were found and controlled. Preparation and lack of armed conflict in critical locust breeding areas, particularly in Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Sudan, facilitated early intervention with relatively selective and low residual insecticides. Preventive, proactive, and reactive locust control approaches are described, and future trends for locust management in Africa and Asia are identified. Sustained and successful preventive and proactive approaches, especially against S. gregaria would help to alleviate a serious constraint to agricultural production with the aim of reducing localized famine in regions chronically plagued by drought, poverty, and hunger.

The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskål) (Orthoptera: Acrididae), a major Old World pest, is associated with agricultural losses and undesirable societal effects. There are three broad approaches to its control: reaction, proaction, and outbreak prevention. Reaction protects crops from swarms but it is costly and disruptive. Proaction involves early intervention during outbreaks to avert further development to plague status; it is in current use because it is effective, relatively inexpensive, and it is the best available option for now. Outbreak prevention, largely unavailable since the 1970s, at least on a regional scale, will require highly sensitive surveillance to detect the onset of gregarization. Sufficiently early intervention can, hypothetically, extend desert locust recession indefinitely. While research on desert locust biology and behavior is, almost, no longer an urgent requirement to improve the efficacy of control, new priorities have arisen for developing outbreak prevention capability (and for enhancing proaction). Salient needs presently include long residual tactics for prophylactic (preventive) control in breeding areas, intervention thresholds, and improved, sustainable coordination among stakeholders at national, regional, and international levels. The most recent desert locust episode of 2020 provides an illustrative example of how prevention might have averted the entire upsurge, and how proaction in some countries contained the spread of swarms. The initial outbreak in Saudi Arabia escaped control due to unpreparedness, and impacts of armed conflict in Somalia and Yemen, which weakened surveillance and control, further contributed to the invasion of ≥22 countries, and the spraying of ≈4.9 million ha, by the end of 2020.