Browsing by Author "Rutaro, Karlmax"

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    Diet acceptance and preference of the edible grasshopper Ruspolia diferens (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae)
    (The Japanese Society of Applied Entomology and Zoology, 2018-02-23)  Malinga, Geofrey M.; Valtonen, Anu;  Lehtovaara, Vilma J.; Rutaro, Karlmax; Opoke, Robert; Nyeko, Philip; Roininen, Heikki
    The edible grasshopper Ruspolia diferens (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) gathered seasonally from the wild is a highly valued and an economically important edible insect, particularly in East Africa. To reduce the pressure on wild populations, a sus tainable mass production technique needs to be developed. Unfortunately, however, basic biological know-how on feeding habits of R. diferens is poorly understood, which poses a constraint on the development of mass-rearing technology. Here, we evaluated the acceptance and feeding preference of R. diferens for 16 cultivated or processed foods using no-choice and multiple-choice laboratory bioassays. The results indicated that adult R. diferens can eat a wide variety of foods but does not necessarily accept all the foods equally. Furthermore, our experiments showed that R. diferens has high ability to select diet among those available. The order of decreasing preference was wheat bran > germinated fnger millet > rice seed head > fnger millet seed head > chicken feed egg booster > sorghum seed head. Finally, our study indicated that sex and color morph are not associated with the order of acceptance and preference of diets in R. diferens. These results show potential foods that could be utilized for developing future mass-rearing methods for R. diferens.