For farmers in Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) needs no introduction. This notorious pest has periodically devastated agricultural fields for millennia, forming massive swarms that can cover up to 1,200 square kilometers and consume 80 to 100 percent of the crops in their path. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a mere 1-square-kilometer swarm containing some 80 million locusts can eat as much food each day as 35,000 people. The swarms that struck East Africa and western Asia in 2019 and 2020 alone are estimated to have resulted in billions of dollars in damages and losses stemming from devastation to crops and pastures that will play out over the coming years.
These infamous grasshoppers aren’t always ruinous. Most of the time, they live solitary lives. But things change when food scarcity forces them to crowd together around limited ...
