The spatio-temporal distribution of Sahlbergella singularis Haglung, a major pest of cacao trees (Theobroma cacao) (Malvaceae), was studied for 2 yr in traditional cacao forest gardens in the humid forest area of southern Cameroon. The first objective was to analyze the dispersion of this insect on cacao trees. The second objective was to develop sampling plans based on fixed levels of precision for estimating S. singularis populations. The following models were used to analyze the data: Taylor's power law, Iwao's patchiness regression, the Nachman model, and the negative binomial distribution. Our results document that Taylor's power law was a better fit for the data than the Iwao and Nachman models. Taylor's b and Iwao's were both significantly >1, indicating that S. singularis aggregated on specific trees. This result was further supported by the calculated common k of 1.75444. Iwao's was significantly
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1603/EN09101Altmetric score:
Dimensions Citation Count:
Publication year
2011
Authors
Bisseleua D H B; Yede; Vidal S
Language
English
Geographic
Cameroon
