“We Have a Locust Plague at Our Back Door”: SIUE Professor Appears in New Documentary on Behavioral Plasticity

"We Have a Locust Plague at Our Back Door": SIUE Professor Appears in New Documentary on Behavioral Plasticity

December 11, 2024, 5:15 PM

Brittany F. Peterson, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Acting Director of the Center for Faculty Development and Innovation at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is a featured expert in the newly released three-part docuseries titled "Why studying locusts requires integrative approaches." The topic is locusts and Peterson's appearance representing SIUE is part of a collaboration that includes six institutions that have contributed to this production.

According to the Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute (BPRI) team, the series, presented by the BPRI and funded by the National Science Foundation, highlights the significance, progress, and impact of interdisciplinary science in unraveling complex natural phenomena. The BPRI is focused on a natural phenomenon in locusts that causes timid and solitary individuals to develop into voracious, swarming locusts. Locusts are not only fascinating because of these extreme behavioral shifts, but also because they are important global pests. This first installment explains why the interdisciplinary approach is positioning BPRI to usher in a new era of locust research with novel tools, resources, and expertise.

Watch the trailer for the documentary.

In addition to her on-camera interview as an expert, Peterson is also one of the senior personnel on the grant (NSF-BI: Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute). She shares details of her experience on the film, her research and a warning that locusts may soon be a mainstay in the U.S.

Tell us what this project is about.
So I'm an associate professor of biology, and this project is a multi-institution, National Science Foundation, biological integration institute. It's a $12 million five-year grant that we are in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M University, Arizona State University, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Washington University in St. Louis. SIUE is one of the six institutions that have researchers all aimed at understanding how locusts work.

Locusts are grasshoppers that do horrible things. The stuff of big biblical plagues is still a reality in a lot of the world. We are working to understand the scientific basis of that behavioral switch. The three-part docuseries talks about why integrative research is necessary to study locusts, the kinds of work that the BPRI is doing across these six institutions, and the impact we think this can have globally.

How did you become a part of it?
It's through collaboration. I had existing relationships with some of the members of the team, and my expertise is on insect microbe interactions. They needed a microbiologist that focused on insects and my name was thrown in.

What is your tie to locust being that you're here in southwestern Illinois?
I think what a lot of folks in the U.S. don't realize is that there is a Central American locust in Mexico that within the next 20 years, likely to cross into the Texas border. We have a locust plague epidemic at our back door. Understanding locust biology is critically important to managing their impact both here and abroad. We hope that this new integrative approach gets us closer to answering those questions and stabilizing food security globally with that information.

So you haven't seen them up close yet right?
They are not swarming in Illinois, but we do have a sister species, Schistocerca americana, which is the American bird wing grasshopper. It's in the same group as many species of locusts so it has a lot of the same genetic features. It has a lot of the same capabilities; it just doesn't do the swarming, marching thing. We're kind of lucky in the U.S. that we haven't had an endemic or native locust species since the Rocky Mountain locust, which went extinct in the late 1800s.

Back to locusts, can you give us a list of the bad things they do?
I think the biggest thing that we're worried about is that they are capable of completely decimating crops. That would devastate the agricultural industry, but it goes beyond that. Think about backyard gardeners or subsistence farmers, people who are just growing food to feed themselves, a locust swarm is not something they're going to be able to manage. Even the tools and technologies we have, like conventional pesticides, aren't really equipped to deal with the sheer quantity of animals in a locust swarm. Apart from crops, locusts can have a huge net impact on an ecosystem completely ravaging it and leaving basically nothing in their wake.

Is this a certain type of year or climate when this happens?
It's frustrating, because every time we think we have the answer to that question it seems like the rules change. A lot of the historical memory that we had about how to effectively mitigate this pest is lost between outbreaks. We're starting over again from scratch. And I think climate change is this constantly moving target that's affecting animals and plants and weather patterns and everything. And so, I think that's one of the things that makes locusts such a fascinating and frustrating study system. We're hoping that by approaching studying locusts with a more integrative approach we can be better prepared.

So, let's talk numbers. Millions are involved in a swarm? How many babies do they have during a certain period of time?
A single female can lay multiple clutches, and the clutches can have hundreds of individuals in them. And so, their strategy is make a bunch of babies, and hope some survive. That's kind of their ecological strategy, rather than like in comparison humans, we invest in our young, right? We don't have very many. It takes a lot of energy to make one. As a species we really invest in that one, hoping that it survives. Grasshoppers and locusts are kind of the opposite. They're like, we'll just have a bunch and play the numbers game.

You'll see it looks like a dark cloud, like a storm cloud. Those are locusts flying. The only thing that comes close to capturing the magnitude of what that is like are cicadas, but locusts are like that on steroids. It's really unfathomable until you see it. But once you do it's a lot easier to understand how they do millions and billions of dollars' worth of damage.

How are they with humans? Do they bite?
They're just annoying. They could bite you, but don't get anything out of that because they're herbivores, so they eat plants. It's not like a pleasant experience, necessarily, but it's also not going to hurt you physically.
How do you relate this to biblical times? Do actually consider what the Bible had as an actual archival document of this.

There are actual reports of plagues of locusts in many major religious texts. Actually, one of my colleagues talks about the historical documentation of this in the documentary. Biblical texts from all over the world document locust plagues, and it's often analogized to being the wrath of God, or some kind of indictment on what humanity is doing because of its devastation. I think this speaks to the utter devastation that locusts can cause.

How did you enjoy working on the documentary?
I think it's been a steep learning curve for us scientists to think about how best to communicate the importance of our research. I think, as a federally funded project, we really have an obligation to think about the fact that taxpayers are paying for this research. We need to communicate what their tax dollars are funding and how important it is to continue to fund research like this. That part of it has been an important lesson.

I have to give credit to the production team at The StoryHive, which is a Houston-based woman-owned company that has worked with us for the last two years on producing these videos. They did the heavy lifting from the creative perspective. We contributed what we know about our science, and they really made this story shine.

Anything else you want to add?
Yes, our SIUE students are doing this research. They are the ones in the lab, dissecting the locusts, analyzing the DNA, so a lot of the credit should go to them actually making the discoveries. The PI's (principal investigators), we're here writing the grants, attending meetings and trying to promote the work they're doing, but the students are the ones getting their hands dirty, doing experiments with the locusts, culturing their bacteria, extracting their DNA to move the science forward.

Peterson says a number of SIUE students, both undergraduate and graduate, have participated in the project throughout the last five years. Two SIUE students are currently still at work in the lab.

The film airs on YouTube and onthe Behavioral Plasticity website.

PHOTOS: Brittany F. Peterson, PhD; Production stills from the docuseries "Why studying locusts requires integrative approaches."