Characteristics of dipterous insects
Alasy is a thermokarst basin formed during the thawing of fossil ice and highly icy soils, with the formation at a mature stage of its development of a wide range of steppe and swamp vegetation in the arid climate of Central Yakutia.
The invertebrate fauna of the alas ecosystem have their own characteristics, which are determined by the isolation of the alas basins, soil conditions and microclimate. The most numerous in terms of species diversity and abundance among the fauna of the Alas are insects.
The distribution of invertebrate animals across the belts of the alas ecosystem is unequal, that is, they are diverse in composition. Of the insects, the predominant orders in number are: Coleoptera, Diptera and Homoptera.
Blood-sucking horseflies, mosquitoes, and midges in the Far East are so numerous that grazing of domestic animals becomes completely impossible. Under the influence of parasitism by blood-sucking arthropods, milk yield and weight gain of livestock and the performance of horses are significantly reduced.
A female horsefly from the order Diptera sucks up to 200 mg at a time. blood. Horsefly bites are very painful. Therefore, cows that are severely bothered by horse flies have reduced milk yield. This is due to the fact that pain and blood loss negatively affect the cow's nervous system, and this, in turn, affects milk production.
Various methods are used to collect insects. Methods for collecting insects for identification and collection and methods for recording their numbers are in many ways similar and overlap. This is due, first of all, to the need to catch insects in both cases. This problem arises both when counting numbers and when determining species.
When conducting entomological research, depending on their goals, it is necessary to use various methods for collecting and catching insects. However, not every collection technique is suitable for use as an accounting technique.
Accounting methods differ from collection methods in that:
- When recording, various quantitative measurements of the habitat are carried out - its area, structure, volume of fished space.
- upon completion of the census, the relative abundance of any insect must be calculated using some formula.
To account for the number of horseflies falling on animals, K.F. Skufin (1951) proposed a special stuffed trap. It is a wooden frame on four poles, covered with coarse dark wool (two blankets) and the contours vaguely resemble the body of a cow or horse. A top-shaped trap consisting of a wire frame covered with gauze is placed on top of the scarecrow. The trap is strengthened in a special cutout of the material, with the trap hole facing down. They place it in places of mass accumulation and attack of horse flies and conduct surveys at different hours of the day under favorable and unfavorable conditions for the flight of these insects. The observer is located 25-30 m from the trap behind some kind of cover (bushes and others) and counts attacks using binoculars with 10x magnification. The top-shaped trap accumulated by horse flies is freed from them or replaced with a new one.
The order Diptera is a vast order. There is only one pair of wings - the front one. They are small, usually bare or in rare cases covered with a few hairs or scales. The chest is large, its segments are fused and the wings and the muscles that move them have a strong support. The head is very mobile. The oral extremities are licking, piercing-sucking or sucking. Diptera are divided into two suborders: long-whiskered and short-whiskered. The long-whiskered suborder includes mosquitoes, midges (small insects that do not develop in water, but in places that are quite damp, where there are organic remains), midges (very small insects, the females of which suck the blood of mammals, and the larvae live in flowing waters) and others . And the short-whiskered suborder includes a variety of flies and insects similar to them: horseflies, gadflies, bloodsuckers (suck the blood of mammals and birds) and others. The practical importance of dipterans is very great. The benefits come from species whose larvae parasitize the body of harmful insects or eat them; species whose larvae feed on corpses and decaying organic remains play a huge role in the cycle of substances and help cleanse our environment, and more. In addition, many dipterans cause great harm. For example, some dipterans suck the blood of domestic animals and humans and exhaust them; a significant number of blood-sucking and non-blood-sucking insects are carriers of dangerous diseases of humans and domestic animals (anthrax, typhoid fever, tuberculosis) and others.
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