报告题目: What are the ultimate causes of desert locust outbreaks?

报告时间: 2018年11月15日，星期四，下午4:20-5:20

报告地点：数学楼408

报告人：Prof. Robert Cheke， The University of Greenwich

Abstract: 

The proximate, short-term, causes of outbreaks of locusts, including the Desert Locust Schistocerca gregaria, are combinations of the timings, geographical distributions and amounts of rainfall and associated vegetation growth. However, what controls these drivers, and the degree to which they are cyclic, is poorly understood. Various hypotheses, such as that  sunspot activity plays a major role, have been advanced by entomologists since 1883 to account for long term patterns in locust numbers but statistical analyses have not offered strong evidence for any clear causal links. However, new mathematical techniques are able to demonstrate causality between time series. Results of applying such techniques to the analysis of the FAO data on numbers of territories infested with swarms of the desert locust from 1866 to 2015 will be presented after initial results.

讲座人简介： 

Robert A.Cheke教授是英国资深动物学家，长期从事应用生态学特别是害虫综合治理和疾病控制等方面的研究。 1974年在Leeds大学获得动物学博士学位。自从1975年Cheke教授开始在Greenwich大学自然资源研究所工作，并在1990年受聘为英国Greenwich大学自然资源研究所的学术带头人。他是伦敦皇家昆虫学会、皇家热带医学和卫生学、英国生态学会、英国鸟类联合会和西非鸟类学会成员。从1979年开始作为世界卫生组织顾问12次指导西非盘尾丝虫病（Onchocerciasis）的防治工作。在国际杂志上发表了210多篇科学论文，合作出版了两本专著，联合编辑了多次会议论文集。 在综合害虫治理策略及其数学模型研究方面开展了深入的研究，在生物数学领域发表20余篇合作研究论文。