Areas used for military training have a typical character of open sites with a varied mosaic of habitats and a significant representation of early successional stages.The diversity of habitats creates favorable conditions for species-rich plant and animal communities.This paper presents the results of a repeated inventory survey of Orthoptera species at 42 abandoned military sites in the Czech Republic conducted in 2008-2009 and 2021-2022, respectively.In total, 61 species were recorded, representing 68 % of all Orthoptera species with recent occurrence in the Czech Republic.Seventeen of the identified species are listed in the recent Red List of Threatened Species of the Czech Republic.The most important records include Dociostaurus brevicollis, Montana montana, Ephippiger ephippiger, Chorthippus pullus, Aiolopus thalassinus, Acrida ungarica and Oedaleus decorus.The high species diversity of grasshoppers and bush-crick-ets with a significant proportion of endangered and rare species underscores the crucial importance of abandoned military sites for the conservation of this insect group.

Panolis flammea is an important pest whose populations intermittently outbreak in Europe. The species overwinters as pharate moths in the pupal stage in soil. Details on the metabolic activity and cold hardiness of P. flammea during the overwintering period have not been published. Therefore, we assessed O-2 consumption and the supercooling point (SCP) of P. flammea in late November, mid-February, and mid-March and the influence of soil humidity under fluctuating temperatures and with brief exposures to two increased temperature regimes (10 and 20 degrees C). The respiration pattern indicated diapause termination in mid-February. A threshold of 0.169 mu l O-2 h(-1) mg(-1) fresh weight indicated potentially activated pre-emerging moths. Drought increased respiration rates. The SCP was lowest in mid-February (-22.2 degrees C) and was negatively correlated with pupal mass. The frost tolerance tended to increase with low substrate humidity, especially at the end of the overwintering period. Our results indicate that P. flammea requires more energy during dry and mild winters than in wet and cold winters. Winter diapause termination and post-diapause development may therefore be accelerated as environmental warming and drought increase.

Abstract Panolis flammea is an important pest whose populations intermittently outbreak in Europe. The species overwinters as pharate moths in the pupal stage in soil. Details on the metabolic activity and cold hardiness of P. flammea during the overwintering period have not been published. Therefore, we assessed O2 consumption and the supercooling point (SCP) of P. flammea in late November, mid‐February, and mid‐March and the influence of soil humidity under fluctuating temperatures and with brief exposures to two increased temperature regimes (10 and 20°C). The respiration pattern indicated diapause termination in mid‐February. A threshold of 0.169 μl O2 h−1 mg−1 fresh weight indicated potentially activated pre‐emerging moths. Drought increased respiration rates. The SCP was lowest in mid‐February (−22.2°C) and was negatively correlated with pupal mass. The frost tolerance tended to increase with low substrate humidity, especially at the end of the overwintering period. Our results indicate that P. flammea requires more energy during dry and mild winters than in wet and cold winters. Winter diapause termination and post‐diapause development may therefore be accelerated as environmental warming and drought increase.

The medicinal plants industry, particularly in regard to products rich in biologically active substances for maintaining health, has grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade, with sales of over-the-counter drugs containing these substances growing by billions of dollars. Attention has thus also been paid to the safety and effectiveness of these medicines. We are currently witnessing a rapid increase in the number of publications devoted to the development of new separation procedures that are not only fast and cheap but also more efficient and eco-friendlier, improving both yields and quality of extracts quality without using hazardous organic solvents. The new approaches include those that use deep eutectic solvents (DES), which are characterized by unique parameters. In fact, DESs can be used for both the isolation and determination of biologically active substances in medicinal plants. Therefore, the purpose of the review is to gather details on the application of DESs in the separation of bioactive compounds in medicinal plants and to provide a solid background for future research in this area. To cover these aspects, the available data and references in the field of interest are reviewed and summarized.

In this study, we describe an inexpensive and rapid method of using video analysis and identity tracking to measure the effects of tag weight on insect movement. In a laboratory experiment, we assessed the tag weight and associated context-dependent effects on movement, choosing temperature as a factor known to affect insect movement and behavior. We recorded the movements of groups of flightless adult crickets Gryllus locorojo (Orthoptera:Gryllidae) as affected by no tag (control); by light, medium, or heavy tags (198.7, 549.2, and 758.6 mg, respectively); and by low, intermediate, or high temperatures (19.5, 24.0, and 28.3°C, respectively). Each individual in each group was weighed before recording and was recorded for 3 consecutive days. The mean (± SD) tag mass expressed as a percentage of body mass before the first recording was 26.8 ± 3.7% with light tags, 72 ± 11.2% with medium tags, and 101.9 ± 13.5% with heavy tags. We found that the influence of tag weight strongly depended on temperature, and that the negative effects on movement generally increased with tag weight. At the low temperature, nearly all movement properties were negatively influenced. At the intermediate and high temperatures, the light and medium tags did not affect any of the movement properties. The continuous 3-day tag load reduced the average movement speed only for crickets with heavy tags. Based on our results, we recommend that researchers consider or investigate the possible effects of tags before conducting any experiment with tags in order to avoid obtaining biased results.

Tracking animals using transmitters is a busy research branch in zoology. In this paper, we study the effect of a temperature and transmitter's weight on a field cricket's movement. We recorded the movement of 180 field crickets with a 4K camera and the captured movies were analyzed by a novel tracking algorithm based on a soft-computing technique called F-transform. The resulting data have a character of multivariate time series and we show how descriptive statistics, linear regression, linguistic fuzzy rules, and random forests might be used for analyzing such data.

We introduce a problem of tracking small animals, especially insects. To solve this problem, we focus on visual tracking in recorded movies, propose our pattern tracking mechanism based on F -transform, and implement a user-friendly software to handle the movies. The tracking core is compared with five state-of-the-art tracking algorithms: KCF, MIL, TLD, Boosting and MedianFlow from processing time and algorithm failure rate point of views. Based on the results computed from 1000 movie frames, we observed that the proposed F-transform tracking core is the fastest and the most reliable method.

Inundation zones of rivers are risky environments for terrestrial animals because of the regular or irregular occurrence of floods. Although animals in these zones have evolved several strategies to survive floods, behavioural anti-flooding strategies have seldom been studied but could play an important role in their life history strategies. We previously reported that the groundhopper Tetrix tenuicornis moves to dense vegetation in response to low atmospheric pressure (which may signal rain and flooding) but prefers mossy microhabitats and bare ground under high atmospheric pressure. In the current study, we found that the ability of the semi-aquatic groundhoppers T. tenuicornis and Tetrix subulata to withstand direct water flow was greater in patches of dense vegetation than in patches of moss or on bare ground. Even a relatively low water velocity led to water transport (presumably passive) of both species, perhaps because they lack arolia or other adhesive devices on their tarsi. This morphological limitation precludes vertical migration on vegetation, which is a common anti-flooding strategy in insects. Our results suggest that, by moving to dense vegetation in response to drops in atmospheric pressure, groundhoppers may reduce their risk of being washed away by floods.

For ectothermic animals, selection of a suitable microhabitat is affected by a combination of abiotic and biotic factors. Also important is the trade-off between those microhabitats with optimal microclimatic conditions and food availability vs. those with the lowest level of competition and lowest risk of predation. Central European species of groundhoppers (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae) live in locations with small-scale mosaics of patches formed by bare ground, moss cushions and vascular plants (grasses and forbs). Our research focused on the effects of selected weather components (current temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and sunlight) on specific microhabitat selection by adults (during the reproductive season) and by the last-instar nymphs (during the non-reproductive season) of the groundhopper Tetrix tenuicornis. Using experimental conditions, we determined that microhabitat use by T. tenuicornis is sex-specific and that microhabitat preference differs between adults and nymphs. We suppose that microhabitats are used according to groundhopper current needs in relation to each habitat's suitability for maintaining body temperature, food intake and reproductive behaviour. Microhabitat preferences were significantly associated with temperature and atmospheric pressure. Changes in atmospheric pressure signal changes in weather, and insects respond to increases or decreases in pressure by adjusting their behaviour in order to enhance survival. We propose that, under low atmospheric pressure, T. tenuicornis actively seeks microhabitats that provide increased protection from adverse weather.

According to a study of type specimens of Discotettix adenanii Mahmood, Idris & Salmah, 2007 and copious specimens of D. belzebuth (Serville, 1838) collected in different parts of Borneo, we found that all species-specific morphological characters of D. adenanii, according to its original description, fall into the morphological variability of D. belzebuth. Thus, we synonymize D. adenanii with D. belzebuth. The sequence of a segment of the mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA of D. belzebuth was also evaluated and added to GenBank as a DNA barcode.

The ecological requirements and biology of the Tetrigidae are almost unknown. The aim of the present work is to contribute to the knowledge of Tetrix bolivari, one of the least studied species of European Tetrigidae, by investigating its seasonal and daily activity, food biology, and vibratory communication. Adults of T. bolivari were found from March to September, with the greatest number of detections occurring between May and August. Based on the study of the daily activity patterns, most activities were positively correlated with temperature and negatively correlated with relative humidity. Detritus and mosses were the main components of the diet, with the most frequently consumed mosses being Bryum caespiticium and Bryum argenteum. Substrate-borne vibrational signals used in communication of T. bolivari are described here in detail for the first time. We distinguished four structural types of vibrational signals produced by males, including the signal produced by wing tremulation.