As we discussed in earlier news posts, preventive locust management has the potential to severely reduce the impact of locust outbreaks if resources and coordination can appropriately align (Figure 1). Nonetheless, to be successfully implemented, preventive strategies are still in need of some research and further refinement. Many of the Global Locust Initiative’s partner organizations are continuously working towards improving preventive management, including some participants of GLI’s First International Conference in April of 2018.

Several of these individuals—Long Zhang, Michel Lecoq, Alexandre Latchininsky, and David Hunter—recently published an article in Annual Reviews of Entomology, Locust and Grasshopper Management, highlighting advances in preventive management and opportunities for future research and improvement. The last comprehensive review of this kind was published in 1960.

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Please welcome our new Global Locust Initiative interns, Braedon Kantola (left) and Teddy Gonzalez (right), who began interning for GLI in January 2019. They cannot begin to describe how enthusiastic they are to be given the opportunity of joining the GLI team to help further the development of research, partnerships and solutions for transboundary pest management.

At Arizona State University, Braedon is currently in the 4+1 Accelerated Master’s Program pursuing his Master of Sustainability Solutions along with a bachelor’s degree in sustainability with a focus on ecosystems, and a certificate in energy and sustainability. Teddy is pursuing concurrent degrees in sustainability and philosophy. In the fall, she will start a Juris Doctor degree from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law's Law and Sustainability program.

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The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) announced today that Arianne Cease, director of the Global Locust Initiative in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, is one of nine recipients of its 2018 New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Research Award.

The purpose of the award is to invest in budding scientists in the food and agriculture field. According to FFAR, “The award recipients were selected on a number of criteria including scientific merit, innovation and a demonstrated commitment to mentoring other young scientists.”

The nine scientists win a total of $2.3 million over three years, and Arizona State University will match the funds given to Cease as a stipulation of the grant. Cease’s work explores the connections between land-use practices and locust outbreaks, and identifies and addresses barriers to sustainable locust management. The Global Locust Initiative also recently won a major grant from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance.

“Locust plagues are a global challenge that requires a team effort to address, and I’m excited to see FFAR support our cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary and transboundary approach,” Cease said. Cease is the only scientist from Arizona to win a New Innovator Award this year.

It was great to see so many Global Locust Initiative members and friends at the November 2018 joint ESA, ESC and ESBC meeting in Vancouver. There were excellent talks highlighting research advancements including another successful Orthopteroid symposium, “Orthopteroids: Small Orders, Big Ideas,” organized by Derek Woller, Hojun Song and Bert Foquet. Building off of our April 2018 GLI launch at ASU, we met new members and continued discussions for novel collaborations and approaches spanning continents and disciplines.

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Locusts have afflicted humanity throughout history, with devastating consequences. It’s no surprise that locusts are one of the 10 plagues in the biblical book Exodus. These insects are species of grasshoppers that can swarm in the millions and wipe out fields of crops in the blink of an eye.

The Global Locust Initiative, an Arizona State University program aiming to study and manage locust outbreaks, recently won a half-million-dollar grant from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (a part of the U.S. Agency for International Development). This is the first time an ASU program has been awarded an OFDA grant, according to research advancement manager Ann Marie Hess, whose dedication to this partnership and work as a research advancement manager, alongside program manager Ariel Rivers, was critical to landing the grant.

With this funding, the Global Locust Initiative team — directed by senior sustainability scientist Arianne Cease — will test whether soil amendments to millet fields in Kaffrine, Senegal, decrease locust outbreaks, improve millet yields and increase farmer livelihoods.

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One of the differentiating characteristics between grasshoppers generally and locusts specifically is the potential for locusts to undergo what scientists call “phase change.” As part of the shift in behaviors associated with phase change, locusts can become gregarious — they group together and form massive swarms as they move across the landscape. It is no surprise then that locust scientists themselves are gregarious, in that effective management of locusts requires coordinated efforts from many different individuals, teams and organizations.

These coordinated efforts, which are essential to effective preventative locust management, are in part the theme of a recent webinar (in Spanish) presented by Cyril Piou of France’s Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD). Piou holds a PhD from Bremen University in Germany, and since 2010 he has worked as part of the Acridology Team at CIRAD, researching various themes in population dynamics, ecology, and modeling systems. Due to his experience in these areas, Piou frequently collaborates with other locust researchers, including partners through Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), who hosted the webinar.

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To successfully realize our work at the Global Locust Initiative (GLI), we engage globally with collaborators living and working with locusts and grasshoppers locally in their communities. Among our list of fantastic partners, we can count Mario Poot Pech of the Yucatán State Committee of Plant Health (CESVY), based in Merida, Mexico. Mario holds a PhD from the Mexican Technological University in Conkal, Yucatán and is an internationally recognized expert on the Central American locust, Schistocerca piceifrons piceifrons Walker, a significant locust pest in parts of Mexico and neighboring countries.

Mario currently represents Mexico for the Regional Organization of Agricultural and Livestock Health (OIRSA), a partnership of 9 Central American countries and international agencies. As part of their regional mandate, OIRSA facilitates a variety of activities in support of better pest management across the agricultural system. In support of these activities, OIRSA regularly hosts trainings to share information about various pests and their management. Recently, Mario participated in an educational OIRSA webinar about the Central American locust (starting at approximately 14:30).

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Within all three of the Global Locust Initiative's pillars of facilitating fundamental and applied research, creating and maintaining a global network of locust practitioners, and developing local solutions to the global challenge of locust plagues, we strive to enable student success. After working in the Cease Lab and with GLI during his time as a Master Card Fellow at ASU, one of our fantastic students, Balanding Manneh, graduated with his bachelor in biology in spring 2018.

Throughout his time in the Cease Lab, Balanding offered integral support in lab and research activities, even helping with fieldwork in Senegal in 2015 and 2016. He is now pursuing a Master of Public Health at the University of British Columbia. He sent us the following update to summarize his time with the Cease Lab.

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ASU School of Life Sciences doctoral student and GLI member, Deanna Zembrzuski, spent the summer with the APHIS team. Following is a summary that Zembrzuski wrote about her experience:

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Douglas Lawton, Global Locust Initiative member and Arizona State University doctoral student, is spending the summer in Australia. Douglas studies landscape variables that affect the behavior of Australian plague locusts, and is co-advised by Arianne Cease, GLI Founding Director and ASU Assistant Professor, and Cathy Waters, a Rangelands Research Officer at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries.

Lawton sent us the following update, along with preliminary maps he developed this summer:

"The Australian plague locust (Chortoicetes terminifera) is the most important Orthopteran pest in Australia. However, our knowledge on the types of habitat and corresponding environmental variables that lead to their swarms remains limited. Using a 30-year data set of Australian plague locust abundances throughout eastern Australia, I am building a heat map of favorable Australian plague locust habitats.

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Representatives from 12 countries gathered at Arizona State University in April for the inaugural meeting of the Global Locust Initiative, a new research and action program designed to help scientists, governments, agribusiness workers and farmers cope with locust plagues.

The initiative, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, combines lab science, fieldwork and data modeling to help reduce locust outbreaks and the effects of plagues, with the goal to improve the well-being of farm communities and global sustainability.

The initiative is led by Senior Sustainability Scientist Arianne Cease, who describes her work in a six-minute KED Talk video, produced by ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

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The Cease Lab at Arizona State University is looking for passionate people to join our dynamic, international, and interdisciplinary team. The primary focus of our research is to connect lab and field studies to understand mechanisms of ecological and organismal function across multiple levels. We work integratively with collaborators to study locusts in social-ecological systems and find regional solutions for the global challenge of locust plagues. These collaborators include natural scientists, social scientists, government agencies, community organizations, and farmers from North America and our field sites in Senegal, Australia, China, Argentina, and Bolivia.

We are accepting applications for 2-3 PhD students who will focus on the South American Locust, Schistocerca cancellata and/or sustainable transboundary pest management in South America.

Students will have the opportunity to:

• Study an unprecedented upsurge of Schistocerca cancellata across this species’ native range in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay
• Network with locust and grasshopper researchers through the Global Locust Initiative
• Use their Spanish-speaking skills to engage stakeholders to find on-the-ground solutions to locust outbreaks (fluency in Spanish is desired for anyone interested in field work and/or work with stakeholders, but is not required)
• Collaborate in a diverse team of researchers at ASU and in South America

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