The effect of temperature and diet on the growth and mortality of Camnula pellucida (Orthoptera: Acrididae) BIOS 35502-01: Practicum in Field Environmental Biology

Temperature and diet are important factors that affect the growth and mortality of grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae). Camnula pellucida (Scudder) are commonly found species of grasshoppers and can cause detrimental damage to agricultural crops. This experiment will examine the contribution of heat-exposure (8 hours vs. 16 hours of preferred temperatures) and food quality (low nitrogen vs. high nitrogen) to the growth and mortality of C. pellucida nymphs from UNDERC-East in Upper Michigan. I hypothesized that heat and diet would significantly affect growth and mortality, with the highest rates in high heat high nitrogen conditions. The results showed that heat had a significant effect on nymph growth, but dietary nitrogen did not. Temperature and diet are both important factors that affect growth and mortality when the factors are independent of each other, but when the factors were combined, only temperature showed significant effects. Another experiment also looked at how heat-exposure affected the metabolism of the nymphs by measuring food consumption. I predicted that food consumption would be the highest in high heat conditions because of increased activity in grasshoppers, and the results supported this hypothesis.