ArticleScientific reports2017
Phylogeny of locusts and grasshoppers reveals complex evolution of density-dependent phenotypic plasticity.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of locust phase polyphenism: from proximate mechanisms to ecology and management.PeerJ · 2026Pooled it
- Rearing, dissection, and temporal transcriptomic profiling protocols to study density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in the genus Schistocerca.STAR protocols · 2026Article
- Genomic evidence reveals taxonomic oversplitting in a wing dimorphic grasshopper complex Tetrix japonica.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Effects of population density on life history traits in a moth: in search of proximate and ultimate explanations.Oecologia · 2026Article
- 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
- Comparative genomics uncovers evolutionary drivers of locust migratory adaptation.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Phylogenetics and Evolutionary Dynamics of Yunnan Acrididae Grasshoppers Inferred from 17 New Mitochondrial Genomes.Insects · 2025Article
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- The time course of behavioural phase change in the Central American locust Schistocerca piceifrons.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Sexual repurposing of juvenile aposematism in locusts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Does space matter? Estimation and evaluation of required space for commercial mass culture of grasshoppers (Acridoidea: Orthoptera).PloS one · 2022Article
- Comparative analysis of phenotypic plasticity sheds light on the evolution and molecular underpinnings of locust phase polyphenism.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Comparative analysis of morabine grasshopper genomes reveals highly abundant transposable elements and rapidly proliferating satellite DNA repeats.BMC biology · 2020Article
- Eight Million Years of Satellite DNA Evolution in Grasshoppers of the Genus Schistocerca Illuminate the Ins and Outs of the Library Hypothesis.Genome biology and evolution · 2020Article
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- Ontogenetic shift from aposematism and gregariousness to crypsis in a Romaleid grasshopper.PloS one · 2020Article
- Genomics of Developmental Plasticity in Animals.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Review
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4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Locusts are grasshoppers that can form dense migrating swarms through an extreme form of density-dependent phenotypic plasticity, known as locust phase polyphenism. We present a comprehensive phylogeny of the genus Schistocerca, which contains both non-swarming grasshoppers and swarming locusts. We find that the desert locust, S. gregaria, which is the only Old World representative of the genus, is the earliest diverging lineage. This suggests that the common ancestor of Schistocerca must have been a swarming locust that crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to America approximately 6 million years ago, giving rise to the current diversity in the New World. This also implies that density-dependent phenotypic plasticity is an ancestral trait for the genus. Through ancestral character reconstruction of reaction norms, we show that colour plasticity has been largely retained in most species in the genus, but behavioural plasticity was lost and regained at least twice. Furthermore, we show that swarming species do not form a monophyletic group and non-swarming species that are closely related to locusts often express locust-like plastic reaction norms. Thus, we conclude that individual reaction norms have followed different evolutionary trajectories, which have led to the evolutionary transition between grasshoppers and locusts - and vice versa.
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