When do beetles and bugs fly? A unified scheme for describing seasonal flight behaviour of highly dispersing primary aquatic insects

Boda, P. and Csabai, Z. (2013) When do beetles and bugs fly? A unified scheme for describing seasonal flight behaviour of highly dispersing primary aquatic insects. HYDROBIOLOGIA, 703. pp. 133-147. ISSN 0018-8158 (print), 1573-5117 (online) (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Many authors investigated the dispersal flight of aquatic insects, but the exact length of the seasonal flying periods and its main characteristics have not been determined. A wide spectrum of species must be investigated before drawing general conclusions on seasonal changes about dispersal flight. Seasonal dispersal flight of aquatic beetles and bugs were studied during a 30-week long monitoring period. Insects were attracted to highly polarizing horizontal shiny black plastic sheets. 90 species/taxa and more than 45 000 individuals were captured during the sampling period. Aquatic insects were rising into the air during all periods of the year (from April till October). We hypothesized that species or group of species can be characterized by different seasonal rhythms of their dispersal flight. A unified scheme was established based on seasonal dispersal activity of 45 species to assess the dispersal behaviour. Detailed information about seasonal dispersal of 22 more species, and seasonal dispersal pattern were predicted in cases of further 23 species. In all, three seasonal patterns and twelve sub-patterns were identified based on specific characteristics of flight. The scheme is widely and generally applicable to characterize the seasonal dispersal flight of primarily aquatic insects. To demonstrate this, we performed the classification on previously reported data. Both previous and current results of the flight dispersal studies can be classified in the scheme, and the results are comparable by using this unified categorization.

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