Locusts are grasshoppers that can form enormous migrating swarms, once vividly recorded in ancient texts, but still occurring to this day and affecting the livelihood of one in ten people on Earth. Currently, multiple continents are experiencing locust plagues that threaten food security both locally and on a larger, potentially global, scale. What makes locusts particularly devastating is their ability to change their behavior depending on population density – this is known as locust phase polyphenism. At low density, they are solitary and harmless grasshoppers, but at high density, they become gregarious and voracious pests that migrate. This plasticity, or variation, in behavior, appearance, and physiology is striking and how population density facilitates this change is still not fully understood. Studying the mechanism of this transformation holds the key to developing effective methods of control for this organism, ensuring food safety, and understanding how social/population pressures can fuel radical change in these animals. This undertaking will require comprehensive scientific integration across different biological disciplines to be accomplished. To address this challenge, a group of researchers has formed a cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary Biological Integration Institute – the Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute (BPRI). Using cutting-edge technologies in research projects spanning from molecules to landscapes, the BPRI will greatly enhance our understanding of locust phase polyphenism and plasticity in other organisms. With a commitment to improving diversity, inclusion and equity, the institute will train the next generation of integrative biologists who can efficiently navigate across different disciplines. The institute will communicate groundbreaking research to the general public and the scientific community through video documentaries, symposia and workshops. The BPRI will partner with the Global Locust Initiative to translate the scientific advances to management for improving global food system sustainability.
Phenotypic plasticity – the ability of a single genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to different environmental conditions – is ubiquitous in nature and occurs across all scales of biological organization. To understand its mechanisms, maintenance, and evolution, complete biological integration is needed. Locust phase polyphenism represents one of the most striking examples of phenotypic plasticity. It also provides a powerful comparative system for understanding how gene expression patterns and epigenetic regulation are linked to shifts in behavior, physiology, and ecology that result in outbreaks, collective movement, and mass migration. The Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute (BPRI) will comprehensively dissect this phenomenon and use it as a model system to transform the study of phenotypic plasticity. Specifically, the BPRI will carry out ten integrative research activities, using three locust and three non-swarming grasshopper species with varying degrees of plasticity in the genus Schistocerca. The BPRI research will provide in-depth understanding of proximate mechanisms of locust phase polyphenism by generating high-quality reference genomes, complemented by tissue-specific and time-resolved transcriptomes and epigenomes, as well as CRISPR/Cas9 and reverse genetics tools to understand functional genetics. These mechanistic approaches will be integrated with organismal biology and ecology to investigate phase-associated nutritional physiology and ecological factors contributing to swarming under laboratory and field conditions. All research activities will be performed across species in a phylogeny-based comparative framework. The feedback among these activities will create synergies and lay the groundwork for the integrative study of phenotypic plasticity across model organisms from genomes to ecology and sustainability.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
