The international team included Youngblood and researchers from ASU's Global Locust Initiative: assistant professor Arianne Cease, President's Professor Michael Angilletta and professor Jon Harrison from the School of Life Sciences, and postdoc Stav Talal from the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, as well as innovators and collaborators in South America.
Plagues of old
Since at least the days of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt in 3200 B.C., locusts have been erupting into massive swarms that descend upon crops and plant life, causing almost total devastation.
Why do these destructive swarms suddenly occur?
Just like people, locusts can be either shy or gregarious. For the most part, locust populations can spend several seasons in a low-density population, called a solitarious phase. The locusts are a cryptic brown or green—shy, solitary and relatively harmless on a global economic scale. However, when circumstances are just right, the locust numbers swell to overcrowding, triggering a drastic switch to a gregarious phase—social, brightly-colored and capable of forming migratory swarms of 80 million locusts per square kilometer.
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