Locusts Change. They do not "Evolve!"
Contents:
A. Changes in Locusts and Brit-Am.
1. Locusts are as a Metaphor for Great Hosts of Warriors.
2. What Happens when Locusts Change?
3. The Changes that Locusts Experience Parallel Brit-Am Researches Concerning Racial Differences in General.
B. Locusts: Extracts of Interest.
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A. Changes in Locusts and Brit-Am.
1. Locusts are as a Metaphor for Great Hosts of Warriors.
The Book of Joel uses a real plague of locusts as a metaphor for future invasions of foreign armies. Ancient Egyptian writings at time refer to their own soldiers as "locusts" invading other kingdoms. Alternately on other occasion they compare enemies to "locusts" overrunning them
2. What Happens when Locusts Change?
Locusts exist normally as grasshoppers, doing their thing and living a relatively solitary existence, eating plants, and being eaten by birds and rodents, and falling prey to various parasites.
An Ecological Change occurs, associated with dry and wet phases. The initial grasshopper-phase locusts become gregarious. They group together in close physical contact.. They stimulate each other. Their serotonin levels increase.
"Serotonin is a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain and throughout your body. Serotonin plays a key role in such body functions as mood, sleep, digestion, nausea, wound healing, bone health, blood clotting and sexual desire. "
Their bodies change. The changes take place within hours. They begin to procreate intensely. They change from one phase to another. They go through several phases. Each Phase is a SEPARATE ENTITY. Before this was realized the scientists mistook the different phases to be separate species.
They also evolve from one phase to another.
For example:
Stage 1. In the beginning we had grasshoppers. Grasshoppers reproduce and breed other grasshoppers.
Stage 2. Grasshoppers encounter environmental challenges, congregate together, and experience body changes. They procreate. The next generation will reflect the new changes along with others. This intermediate generation is not just an "evolving form in process" but a new entity in its own right.
They appear to have their own DNA after the change henceforth suited to longer flight patterns and the need for movement.The changes that take place can vary from one area to another according to environmental differences.
The changes may continue for several generation until the final result arrives. The changes however do not have to go all the way.
This could be important and have general implications.
Stage 3. The Environmental situation returns to normal or changes again. The locusts may then return to being grasshoppers over a period of several generations.
3. The Changes that Locusts Experience Parallel Brit-Am Researches Concerning Racial Differences in General.
Population have certain physical attributes and DNA suited to their Environment. They reproduce and replicate each other.
Changes in the surroundings. The DNA and physical attributes of People also changes, some features change quickly, others take time. The Changes are fixed and transmitted by heredity.
Each stage is unique in its own right, and may remain stationary.
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B. Locusts: Extracts of Interest.
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Acute and chronic gregarisation are associated with distinct DNA methylation fingerprints in desert locusts
Eamonn B. Mallon,
Harindra E. Amarasinghe &
Swidbert R. Ott
Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 35608 (2016)
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35608
Abstract
Desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) show a dramatic form of socially induced phenotypic plasticity known as phase polyphenism. In the absence of conspecifics, locusts occur in a shy and cryptic solitarious phase. Crowding with conspecifics drives a behavioural transformation towards gregariousness that occurs within hours and is followed by changes in physiology, colouration and morphology, resulting in the full gregarious phase syndrome. ... We find that crowd-reared and solitary-reared locusts show markedly different neural MS-AFLP fingerprints. However, crowding for a day resulted in neural MS-AFLP fingerprints that were clearly distinct from both crowd-reared and uncrowded solitary-reared locusts. Our results indicate that changes in DNA methylation associated with behavioural gregarisation proceed through intermediate states that are not simply partial realisations of the endpoint states.
Phenotypic plasticity is particularly common in insects, a fact implicated in their evolutionary success5. A striking example is provided by phase polyphenism in locusts. Locusts are grasshoppers (Acrididae) that can transform between two extreme phenotypes known as the solitarious and gregarious phase, which differ profoundly in morphology, physiology and behaviour6. Solitarious-phase locusts are cryptic and shy, and avoid conspecifics; gregarious-phase locusts are active and mobile and seek out conspecifics, causing them to aggregate in swarms. Several distantly related grasshopper species show phase polyphenism, with migratory locusts (Locusta migratoria) and desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) being amongst the most extreme and economically relevant. The sole direct environmental driver of phase change is the presence or absence of conspecifics. Solitarious desert locusts acquire gregarious behaviour within a few hours of forced crowding7,8. Behavioural solitarisation of long-term gregarious locusts is markedly slower, indicating a consolidation of the gregarious state with prolonged crowding. In desert locusts, phase state at hatching is additionally determined by trans-generational epigenetic inheritance9.
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Epigenetics and locust life phase transitions
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/1/88/13606/Epigenetics-and-locust-life-phase-transitions
Ulrich R. Ernst,
Matthias B. Van Hiel, Geert Depuydt, Bart Boerjan, Arnold De Loof, Liliane Schoofs
Insects are one of the most successful classes on Earth, reflected in an enormous species richness and diversity. Arguably, this success is partly due to the high degree to which polyphenism, where one genotype gives rise to more than one phenotype, is exploited by many of its species. In social insects, for instance, larval diet influences the development into distinct castes; and locust polyphenism has tricked researchers for years into believing that the drastically different solitarious and gregarious phases might be different species. Solitarious locusts behave much as common grasshoppers. However, they are notorious for forming vast, devastating swarms upon crowding. These gregarious animals are shorter lived, less fecund and transmit their phase characteristics to their offspring. The behavioural gregarisation occurs within hours, yet the full display of gregarious characters takes several generations, as does the reversal to the solitarious phase.
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Ecological and Human Diet Value of Locusts in a Changing World
by Gabriella J. Kietzka 1,*ORCID,Michel Lecoq 2ORCID andMichael J. Samways 1ORCID
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/9/1856
In the ancient Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom (1070 - 1550 BCE), locusts are positively referred to as the might of the Egyptian army while negatively as the defeated enemy armies, with 'locusts' being a metaphor for 'multitude' . This double perspective has a biological equivalent: locusts as an extraordinary and ecologically important natural phenomenon yet also a harbinger of human hardship through resource loss and pestilence. A locust outbreak in the northwestern provinces, including Egypt, in the early fourth century is even thought to have led to an outbreak of rats (and their associated fleas) through an abundance of food provided by locust cadavers, which would have caused a devastating plague among the local human population.
Globally, there are several species of grasshoppers that currently, or at some time in the past, have shown a tendency towards gregarization and caused economic damage. Many of these still do. Some species occur as different subspecies at different geographical locations and vary in their behavior and morphology.
The Desert locust reproduces rapidly and migrates over very long distances. It has the genetic predisposition to exist in two forms, solitaria or gregaria [4,39]. During recessions, solitary Desert locusts are usually restricted to the semiarid and arid deserts of Africa and the Near East and Southwest Asia that receive less than 200 mm of rain annually. This covers an area of about 15 million km2, consisting of about 30 countries [40]. During the invasion periods, approximately 31 million km2 and over 60 countries are recurrently vulnerable to Desert locust swarms, affecting up to 20% of the world's land area [41]. For these reasons, the Desert locust is considered the most dangerous migratory pest in the world. There is an abundance of information available on this pest, which makes it the ideal species to use as an example for quantifying the ecological significance and nutritional value to human.
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