Callipatamus italicus (L.)is one of the main pests in Xin Jiang’s grasslands. In order to distinguish the gregarious and solitary phases of this pest we used numerical taxonomy to analyse 10 of its morphometric and 5 of its morphological charactersAnalysis of variance indicated that the gregarious and solitary phases differed significantly in all 10 morphometric characters (P<0.05)，especially eleytron length(E)，femur length(F) and tibia lengthWith regard to the morphological characters， a significant difference was found in E/F ratio; the E/F ratios of the gregarious and solitary phase being 1.42-1.94 and 0.90-1.39，respectivelyHierarchical cluster analysis divided the sample into 4 groups: gregarious males， gregarious females， solitary males and solitary femalesPrincipal component analysis revealed three principal components each explaining 82.96%、13.86% and 2.65% of the total variation，and collectively accounting for 99.48% of the total variationThe sequence picture of principal component analysis was based on the principal component score of the main morphometric character， which was consistent with the result of hierarchical cluster analysisThe results indicate that the gregarious and solitary phases of C. italicus can be reliably distinguished on the basis of quantitative characters.

 

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