Events Detail

Speaker:
Prof Hojun Song from Texas A&M

The genus Schistocerca (Orthoptera: Acrididae) includes some of the most devastating locust species in the world, including the desert locust (S. gregaria), the Central American locust (S. piceifrons), and the South American locust (S. cancellata). These locust species show an extreme form of density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in which cryptic and shy individuals, known as the solitarious phase, can transform into conspicuous and gregarious individuals, known as the gregarious phase, in response to changes in local population density. In fact, this “locust phase polyphenism” is what makes the locusts distinctly different from regular grasshoppers. Intriguingly, Schistocerca includes 45 species, most of which are non-swarming sedentary grasshopper species, and phylogenetic studies have shown that the locust species do not form a monophyletic group, suggesting that locust phase polyphenism has evolved multiple times in the genus. Furthermore, recent experimental studies have indicated that some of the non-swarming grasshopper species show reduced density-dependent phenotypic plasticity, suggesting that Schistocerca as a whole is an exciting model clade that can be used to study how phenotypic plasticity has evolved as species diverge.