ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Gregarious desert locusts have substantially larger brains with altered proportions compared with the solitarious phase.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 133 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of locust phase polyphenism: from proximate mechanisms to ecology and management.PeerJ · 2026Pooled it
- Anatomical Investigation Reveals a Second Olfactory System in Locusts.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2026Article
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- The Integrative Imperatives of Locust Phase Polyphenism Research: A Bibliometric Analysis.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Review
- To jump or not to jump: comparing effects of phenotypic plasticity on the visual responses and escape behavior of locusts and grasshoppers.Journal of neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Influence of Phase Change on Parthenogenesis in the Migratory Locust: A Behavioral Analysis.Insects · 2025Article
- Convergent Molecular Evolution Associated With Repeated Transitions to Gregarious Larval Behavior in Heliconiini.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Evolution of Plasticity in Brain Morphology.Brain, behavior and evolution · 2025Review
- Embryos assist morphogenesis of others through calcium and ATP signaling mechanisms in collective teratogen resistance.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Experience-dependent plasticity in the olfactory system ofFrontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Plasticity in Chemical Host Plant Recognition in Herbivorous Insects and Its Implication for Pest Control.Biology · 2022Review
- Neuroanatomical shifts mirror patterns of ecological divergence in three diverse clades of mimetic butterflies.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Additive genetic variance for traits least related to fitness increases with environmental stress in the desert locust,Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Effects of Age, Phase Variation and Pheromones on Male Sperm Storage in the Desert Locust,Insects · 2021Article
- AInsects · 2021Review
- Age and social experience induced plasticity across brain regions of the paper waspBiology letters · 2021Article
- Sun compass neurons are tuned to migratory orientation in monarch butterflies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The behavioural demands of group living and foraging have been implicated in both evolutionary and plastic changes in brain size. Desert locusts show extreme phenotypic plasticity, allowing brain morphology to be related to very different lifestyles in one species. At low population densities, locusts occur in a solitarious phase that avoids other locusts and is cryptic in appearance and behaviour. Crowding triggers the transformation into the highly active gregarious phase, which aggregates into dense migratory swarms. We found that the brains of gregarious locusts have very different proportions and are also 30 per cent larger overall than in solitarious locusts. To address whether brain proportions change with size through nonlinear scaling (allometry), we conducted the first comprehensive major axis regression analysis of scaling relations in an insect brain. This revealed that phase differences in brain proportions arise from a combination of allometric effects and deviations from the allometric expectation (grade shifts). In consequence, gregarious locusts had a larger midbrainoptic lobe ratio, a larger central complex and a 50 per cent larger ratio of the olfactory primary calyx to the first olfactory neuropile. Solitarious locusts invest more in low-level sensory processing, having disproportionally larger primary visual and olfactory neuropiles, possibly to gain sensitivity. The larger brains of gregarious locusts prioritize higher integration, which may support the behavioural demands of generalist foraging and living in dense and highly mobile swarms dominated by intense intraspecific competition.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.