Chapter 14. Evolution of insect flight. Pages 251-256. In: R. C. Rainey. 1989. Migration and Meteorology. Flight behavior and the atmospheric environment of locusts and other migrant pests. Oxford, UK, Clarendon Press, 314 pages.

Keywords: migration without navigation, it now seems easier to imagine the first accidentally airborne insects being carried up in vigorous thermal up-currents like dust-devils, in the kind of semi-desert environment in which downwind displacement (towards areas of wind convergence with their rain) could have had an immediate survival value, even for early for early insects unable to remain airborne by their own efforts for more than a few seconds of descent and as yet incapable of active orientation or indeed of an controlled aerial maneuver. Apart from their maintenance of swarm cohesion (considered below, and probably the most significant manifestation of gregarious behavior), migrating locusts came to appear very much as creatures of circumstance with not only the directions but even the destinations of their spectacular migrations largely if not wholly determined by the corresponding wind fields. One further ecological question on migrant flight behavior, relating both to birds and locusts, is that of the continued cohesion of the desert locust swarms, which is maintained by such a complex behavior pattern of gregarious flight orientation, most of this fight behavior seen in migrating swarm indeed serves the immediate purpose not of long-range transport but of maintaining swarm cohesion.

Navigation in static populations—the honeybee. Best documented of static populations of actively flying insects is the honey-bee colony, which demonstrates standards of navigation which insects can achieve.