Radar Entomology Observing Insect Flight and Migration

Abstract

It is now a little over 40 years since the foundation of the research field that this book describes. The book’s two authors, who have had the fortune to be working in the field almost since the beginning, have felt for some time that a monograph might be useful, mainly as a means of consolidating what has been achieved so far and making it more accessible. A start was made, in fact, over 10 years ago, with Professor J.R. Riley, one of the field’s founders, as a third co-author. But at that time, a new technique was being developed that promised to revolutionize how observations were made, and bringing that to fruition and documenting it through journal publications was deemed a higher priority. With the field’s methods again fairly settled and the strengths and weaknesses of the new approach evident, production of a monograph – now somewhat extended – seems timely. We have also been encouraged in this endeavour by the continued activity mani- fested within the field. After a slight loss of momentum around the turn of the millen- nium, due largely to the winding up of a previously strong programme in the USA, research effort has picked up, notably through some vigorous development in China. There is currently a steady stream of journal publications and a noticeable trend towards presenting results in general biological, ecological and behavioural terms rather than purely as entomology. The field’s origins were in applied research on migratory pests – initially locusts – but its scope is now much broader. Nevertheless, the total research effort – both in terms of the number of active researchers and the number of observation campaigns and observing sites – remains quite modest. This is partly because this line of research requires some specialized and unusual skills: it is not easy to establish a team with even the minimum skill set, and harder still to keep it intact for long enough to move the discipline forward. Both in its methods and in the scientific issues it addresses, radar entomology is highly interdisciplinary and this perhaps positions it a little aside from the biological mainstream. Nevertheless, its observations are to be understood in terms of core biological themes – especially behaviour, ecology and evo- lution – and it is towards the elucidation of these, and sometimes also towards their practical application, that the research effort has been directed. These characteristics seem quite favourable for a monograph: the body of material to be incorporated is not overwhelmingly large but it is quite broad in its scope and so should interest more than just a few specialists.