›› 2003, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (2): 171-177.

• RESEARCH PAPERS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Spatial distribution patterns of the whitebacked planthopper in rice fields

ZHOU Qiang, ZHANG Run-Jie, GU De-Xiang   

  • Online:2003-04-20 Published:2003-04-20

Abstract: The whitebacked planthopper, Sogatella furcifera(Horvth) is a major pest of rice crops in China. Its spatial distribution in rice fields is very complex. In this study, we applied semivariogram and ordinary kriging, the most important geostatistical techniques, to analyze the spatial structure of whitebacked planthopper nymphs in rice fields during different growing seasons of rice. Over the rice growing season, the average density of nymphs was very low, and their clumped range was less in the early rice season than in the late rice season. After immigration into rice fields, the nymph population showed a clumped distribution at low density, and the distance between dependent samples became larger as the growing season progressed. At low density, planthoppers had good spatial dependence over short distances ranging from 17.3 m to 60 m or more. Both density and range were less in the early than in the late rice season. The application of geostatistics to these data provided more detailed information on the spatial dependence and spatial structure of the whitebacked planthopper population during different rice growing stages.

Key words: rice plant, whitebacked planthopper, geostatistics, spatial distribution, simulation