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Why do locusts abandon the quiet solitary life to join the swarm?

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Why do locusts abandon the quiet solitary life to join the swarm?

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18 December 2008 Researchers at Rothamsted Research and their colleagues at the University of Sydney in Australia may have an answer to a perplexing ecological and evolutionary problem: why it is that locusts switch from an innocuous solitary lifestyle to form huge cohesive groups that can devastate crops and strip fields bare. Their report appears in the December 18th Current Biology.In addition to being a notorious outbreak pest, locusts display a remarkable and potentially devastating phenomenon, known as density-dependent phase polyphenism. Changes in local population density cause locusts to abandon their cryptic, solitary state to form migratory swarms that can contain billions of insects and travel hundreds of kilometres each day. At such times, the gregarious phase not only behaves differently from the solitary form, it also differs in physiology, colour, shape and many other traits so much so that the two phases were originally thought to be completely different species. Densi

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