Whats Bugging Locusts?
What makes them do it? A team of scientists led by Iain Couzin of Princeton University and including colleagues at the University of Oxford and the University of Sydney believes it may finally have an answer to this enduring mystery. “Cannibalism,” said Couzin, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton. Writing in the May 8 online edition of Current Biology, Couzin and colleagues say that the collective motion of locusts is driven by “cannibalistic interactions.” “Cannibalism is rife within marching bands of locusts,” said Couzin. Desert locusts usually feed on vegetation, but individual locusts have been observed to feed on other live locusts or cadavers. This behavior and its effect upon the group, however, have not previously been studied. “No one knew until now that cannibalistic interactions are directly responsible for the collective motion exhibited by these bands,” added Couzin, whose graduate student, Sepideh Bazazi, is the lead author on the pape
