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The Terrifying Science Behind the Locust Plagues of Africa


The Food and Agriculture Organization
UN
the Global Locust Initiative
Arizona State University
Overson
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Matt Simon
Jekyll
Hyde
Arianne Cease
Schistocerca gregaria.)But
Rick Overson
Keith Cressman


South American
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the Horn of Africa
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East Africa
Ethiopia
Kenya
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India
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The New York Times
SOURCE: https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-science-behind-the-locust-plagues-of-africa/
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Summary

Matt Simon With hundreds of billions of locusts tearing through farmland, it’s the worst outbreak to strike the region in decades.Tearing across East Africa right now is a plague of biblical proportions: Hundreds of billions of locusts in swarms the size of major cities are laying waste to the crops in their path. Farmers throughout East Africa now face food shortages, as the plague consumes both crops in the field and in storage.Locusts are actually special kinds of grasshoppers known for their gregariousness, and not in a good way. Being bright and alone, especially in a barren desert, probably isn’t a good strategy for the solo locust, so they stay drab.And speaking of food, you might assume that to fuel their epic migrations—an individual locust might travel over 90 miles in a day, consuming its own weight in plant matter—the insects would need to load up on protein, especially since their new bodies come with extra muscle mass. Cease and Overson have shown that for South American locusts, at least, (they haven’t yet done field tests on desert locusts in Africa), it’s more about loading up on carbohydrates, especially as they’re transforming into their gregarious phenotype.And it’s precisely this physiological quirk that turns a locust swarm into a plague: These swarming grasshoppers love grains, a staple of the human diet. “A locust plague is much like a wildfire,” Cressman says. No problem.” But if they can’t detect and obliterate the locust plague early, it will grow and grow, really only stopping when the swarm runs out of food.Once the pesticide operation begins, people occupying infected lands have to vacate for 24 hours until the chemicals break down.

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