Ecology of the Moroccan Locust in Iraq and Syria and the Prevention of its Outbreaks

Abstract

In the spring of 1932 the President of the International Locust Office at Damascus invited me to visit the main breeding areas of the Moroccan Locust (Dociostaurus maroccanus, Thunbg.) within the territories of the states adhering to that Office, i.e. Turkey, Syria and Iraq, in order to survey the local locust problem and to advise on the best general policy of locust control. The visit represented partly a continuation of the previous season's work in Western Anatolia (Uvarov, 1932) and concerned the great locust area which comprises the south-eastern vilayets of the Turkish Republic, the northern provinces of Syria and northern Iraq.The voyage was planned to take place at the period when oviposition by locusts usually occurs, and about three weeks in the second half of May and early June were spent in actually touring the areas subject to regular locust invasions in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, no arrangements were made for including Southern Turkey in the tour and, therefore, an important section of the area remained unstudied.While the choice of the period for the ecological investigations proved to be correct, the year was scarcely favourable for reaching very definite conclusions. Locust swarms were numerous and rather widely spread during at least two or three previous years, but the meteorological conditions of the early spring of 1932 were quite exceptional, owing to the practical absence of rains, which caused great mortality amongst young hoppers.