Predicting mating flights through meteorological cues using multi-scale logistic regression

초록

The red imported tire ant is one of the most destructive animals in the US. Its prolific ability through mating flights has aggravated the situation. Understanding the environmental cues triggering mating flights would be important for a comprehensive control Solution. Fire ant colony activities related to mating flights were daily monitored from April 2001 to March 2002, and the associated weather data were documented. The method of logistic regression is used to identify environmental factors associated with mating flight where multi-scale decomposition of the meteorological variables is considered to identify the within and the between cues for mating flights. Our empirical results indicate that ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, barometric pressure, and recent rain are significant factors that trigger or influence fire ant mating flights. Among those factors, the ambient temperature. the change in barometric pressure, relative humidity, wind speed, and recent rain are found to be the macro-scale cues, whereas the ambient temperature is also found to be the micro-scale Cues. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Soils, Ltd.

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