Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 30 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5914, pp. 627 - 630
DOI: 10.1126/science.1165939
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Serotonin Mediates Behavioral Gregarization Underlying Swarm Formation in Desert Locusts

Michael L. Anstey,1* Stephen M. Rogers,1,2*{dagger} Swidbert R. Ott,2 Malcolm Burrows,2 Stephen J. Simpson1,3

Desert locusts, Schistocerca gregaria, show extreme phenotypic plasticity, transforming between a little-seen solitarious phase and the notorious swarming gregarious phase depending on population density. An essential tipping point in the process of swarm formation is the initial switch from strong mutual aversion in solitarious locusts to coherent group formation and greater activity in gregarious locusts. We show here that serotonin, an evolutionarily conserved mediator of neuronal plasticity, is responsible for this behavioral transformation, being both necessary if behavioral gregarization is to occur and sufficient to induce it. Our data demonstrate a neurochemical mechanism linking interactions between individuals to large-scale changes in population structure and the onset of mass migration.

1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK.
2 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK.
3 School of Biological Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

* *These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: smr34{at}cam.ac.uk

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)