Marauding Mormon crickets get radio transmitters.

Salt lake City Tribune ^ | 03/15/2005 | Valerie Bauman

[Bobalu]

Scientists map high-tech war on Utah crickets
Tiny radios track the critters, give clues on how to stop them from marauding
By Valerie Bauman
The Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Armed with a glue gun and radio transmitters the size of a penny, a University of North Carolina scientist is trying to stop mass insect migrations that devastate ranches in the Mountain West.

Mormon crickets, also known as flightless katydids, travel in massive packs, devouring all surrounding terrain as they move. Packs of the bugs can cover more than a mile a day and devastate crops.

Scientists are trying to identify patterns the crickets follow so they can kill them or divert their paths with small distributions of pesticide, rather than the blanket applications now used against the pests.

Patrick Lorch, a postdoctoral fellow in biology at UNC-Chapel Hill, is among three scientists studying the crickets and their travels.

The trio - which also includes Gregory Sword, a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service, and Darryl Gwynne, a biology professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga - do their research by gluing tiny radio transmitters to the backs of crickets, and then tracking the signals they emit as they travel.

[Bobalu]

Maybe they can teach the bugs morse at 5wpm?... then we could swell the ranks of ham radio operators ;-)

[skinkinthegrass]

"...If you wish upon a star..."

[Mike Darancette]

Attach little Seagull attractors.

[Choose Ye This Day]

Just get about 30,000 seagulls, see...