5:02pm Monday 29th December 2008
By Alex Lewis
SCIENTISTS at Harpenden's Rothamsted Research may have discovered why locusts gather in vast swarms capable of devastating crops.
Although solitary for most of their lives, locusts periodically gather in swarms of billions, which strip fields bare as they migrate hundreds of miles a day.
As their behaviour switchess their bodies change shape, so much that scientists used to think there were two species. Until now, it has always puzzed entomologosts how this behaviour evolved, but the Harpenden scientists have used a mathematical model to show how locusts would be very vulnerable to a predator such as a stork if they remained dispersed as their population increased.
Their conclusion that the swarms evolved to stop predators wiping out millions at one swoop may explain how other species behave, for example in response to parasites.
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