Nadia Waloff

Nadejda "Nadia" Waloff FRES (2 September 1909 – 5 June 2001) was a Russian-born English entomologist. She worked on the biology of locusts, flight and dispersal in the Hemiptera, and taught at the Imperial College.

Nadia was born in St. Petersburg and her family fled in 1919 and took refuge in Britain. Along with her sister Zena (died 1991) and two brothers she was taken care of by Boris Uvarov, who was the director of the Anti-Locust Research Centre in London. An early interest in entomology led her and Zena to study at the Imperial College. Nadia worked on pests at the Slough laboratory and received a Ph.D and Sc.D from Imperial College. She was known for her teaching ability and conducted research on the diapause of flour moths, the ecology and population dynamics of various insects. Some of her significant research included studies on the dispersal and flight of Hemiptera including leafhoppers.[1] She examined the factors contributing to wing polymorphism, the presence of wingless, short-winged and long-winged forms in relation to habitats and life-history. She suggested that trees and woody plants are architecturally more complex with leaves being widely separated and making flight more important. This she suggested would explain the observation that cicadas and other arboreal hemiptera rarely had wingless forms.[2] She was also among the first to use radioactive P-35 tracers to study the dispersal of mirid bugs.[3][4] She retired in 1978.[5]

The grasshopper Oedaleus nadiae was named after her.[6]

References
  1. Waloff, N. (1973). "Dispersal by flight of leafhoppers (Auchenorrhyncha: Homoptera)" (PDF). Journal of Applied Ecology. 10 (3): 705–730. doi:10.2307/2401864. JSTOR 2401864.
  2. Waloff, N. (1983). "Absence of wing polymorphism in the arboreal, phytophagous species of some taxa of temperate Hemiptera: an hypothesis". Ecological Entomology. 8 (2): 229–232. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2311.1983.tb00502.x. S2CID 83833159.
  3. Lewis, C. T.; Waloff, N. (1964). "The use of radioactive tracers in the study of dispersion of Orthotylus virescens (Douglas & Scott) (Miridae, Heteroptera)". Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata. 7 (1): 15–24. doi:10.1111/j.1570-7458.1964.tb00723.x. S2CID 83843785.
  4. Waloff, N. (1979). "Partitioning of resources by grassland leafhoppers (Auchenorrhyncha, Homoptera)". Ecological Entomology. 4 (4): 379–385. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2311.1979.tb00597.x. ISSN 0307-6946. S2CID 85176543.
  5. Jones, T.; Southwood, R. (2002). "Dr. Nadejda Waloff FRES (Hon) (1909–2001)". Antenna. 26: 6–9.
  6. Ritchie, J. Mark (1981). "A taxonomic revision of the genus Oedaleus Fieber (Orthoptera: Acrididae)". Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History). 42: 83–184.


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