Frenchman mountain dolostone: 500 million-year-old grand canyon rock layer finally gets a name

UNLV geologists name ancient rock layer after Las Vegas mountain that contains similar strata; research published in the journal Geosphere.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS

 

IMAGE: VIEW OF THE GRAND CANYON FROM THE SOUTH RIM view more 

CREDIT: JOSH HAWKINS/UNLV

LAS VEGAS – May 3, 2023 – The Grand Canyon is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, visited by millions of admirers each year. So, naturally, you’d think that all of its rock layers had been studied and named. But you’d be wrong. 

In a new report published this spring in the Geological Society of America journal Geosphere, a UNLV-led research team outlines how it identified and bestowed a moniker upon a previously unexplored 500 million-year-old Grand Canyon formation: The Frenchman Mountain Dolostone. 

The newly named rock layer has lain hidden in plain sight throughout the Grand Canyon for millennia, but — until now — geologists had not named it or studied it in detail. 

The UNLV research team named it the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone (FMD) —after a similarly named mountain that lies adjacent to Las Vegas, Nevada. That’s where the FMD is thickest, most complete, and most accessible for study. Through scientific detective work, the researchers were able to narrow down the age of this stratigraphic interval and its relationship to strata in the Grand Canyon. 

“For decades, geologists were unable to precisely correlate the succession of strata at Frenchman Mountain with those in the Grand Canyon, in part because Frenchman Mountain was tectonically displaced about 40 miles to the west since the rocks were deposited,” said lead author Steve Rowland, an emeritus professor of geology at UNLV and paleontologist at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. “Establishing detailed descriptions and thickness measurements of the strata at Frenchman Mountain and also in the Grand Canyon has finally allowed us to solve this problem.” 

The FMD is over 1,200 feet thick at Frenchman Mountain, Rowland said, but it thins dramatically toward the east. The portions exposed within the Grand Canyon range in thickness from nearly 400 feet near the “West Rim” Skywalk to less than 100 feet in Marble Canyon, in the eastern part of Grand Canyon National Park. 

In 1945, geologist Edwin McKee distinguished – but did not formally name – the cliff-forming interval of rocks that occur just above the well-known Muav Formation. The FMD contains no fossils, so McKee was unsure of its age.  Rowland’s team used a relatively new technique to determine the FMD’s age ― subtle differences in the ratio of stable isotopes of carbon. Fluctuations in the ratios of these isotopes occurred at the same time all over the Earth as the layers were deposited. The researchers compared fluctuations in the Frenchman Mountain strata with those identified in precisely dated rock layers elsewhere in the world. The results indicate that the newly named formation was deposited over an interval of 7.3 million years, during the Cambrian Period, between 502.8 million and 495.5 million years ago.

The FMD is the first new formation to be named in the canyon since 1985 when the Surprise Canyon Formation was named. It is also the first rock layer exposed in the Grand Canyon to be named for a location outside the Grand Canyon region. 

In addition to Rowland, the research team included former UNLV graduate student Slava Korolev, Denver Museum of Nature and Science geologist James Hagadorn, and UNLV mathematics professor Kaushik Ghosh.

About the Paper

“Frenchman Mountain Dolostone: A new formation of the Cambrian Tonto Group, Grand Canyon and Basin and Range, USA” was published this spring in Geosphere, a Geological Society of America academic journal.

Quartermaster Canyon (Arizona) exposure, with stratigraphic units labeled. Frenchman Mountain Dolostone here is 117m thick.

CREDIT

Stephen Rowland/UNLV

JOURNAL

Geosphere

DOI

10.1130/GES02514.1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Frenchman Mountain Dolostone: A new formation of the Cambrian Tonto Group, Grand Canyon and Basin and Range, USA

Nitrogen addition and mowing alter drought resistance and recovery of grassland communities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: THE FINAL STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELS DEMONSTRATE THAT NITROGEN ADDITION AND MOWING CHANGE COMPOSITIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF COMMUNITY RESISTANCE (A) AND RECOVERY (B) MAINLY BY MODULATING SPECIES ASYNCHRONY, THE CORRESPONDING RESISTANCE AND RECOVERY OF DOMINANT SPECIES AND GRASSES. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Zhuwen Xu (School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University). The effects of increased nitrogen input and mowing on the resistance and recovery of temperate grassland experiencing a three-year natural drought (from 2015 to 2017) were investigated based on a five-year field manipulative experiment. The experiment was conducted during 2014 to 2018 at the Erguna Forest-Steppe Ecotone Research Station in Erguna of Inner Mongolia, China. Nitrogen addition (+10 g nitrogen m−2yr−1, N), mowing, and N plus mowing were implemented annually as treatments with natural communities receiving no nitrogen addition and no mowing as control. Species composition and aboveground biomass of plant communities were surveyed in each growing season during the five-year experiment.

The results of the experimental show that nitrogen addition increased grassland biomass recovery but decreased structural recovery after drought, whereas annual mowing increased grassland biomass recovery and structural recovery but reduced structural resistance to drought. These findings illustrate the necessity of considering stability across multiple levels of ecological organization to gain a more complete understanding of the effects of anthropogenic environmental changes on ecological stability.

The researchers also found the effects of nitrogen addition and mowing on community biomass/structural resistance and recovery were mainly regulated by the stability of the dominant species and asynchronous dynamics among species, and the community biomass resistance and recovery were also greatly determined by the stability of grasses. These results highlight the importance of dominant species and specific plant functional group, as well as the complementarity effects among species for determining both biomass and structural stability of temperate grassland experiencing drought.

This study provides evidences on the substantial influences of increase in nitrogen enrichment and mowing on drought responses of temperate grasslands, and has important implications for grassland management under increasing anthropogenic disturbance and extreme climate events.

See the article:

Nitrogen addition and mowing alter drought resistance and recovery of grassland communities

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-022-2217-9

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JOURNAL

Science China Life Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s11427-022-2217-9 

Converging ocean currents bring floating life and garbage together

Community science survey reveals abundance of sea creatures in the North Pacific “Garbage Patch”

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: BLUE BUTTON JELLIES, KNOWN BY THEIR SCIENTIFIC NAME PORPITA, FLOAT ON THE OCEAN’S SURFACE USING A ROUND DISC, AND DRIFT WHERE THE CURRENT TAKES THEM. view more 

CREDIT: DENIS RIEK, THE GLOBAL OCEAN SURFACE ECOSYSTEM ALLIANCE (GO-SEA) FIELD GUIDE (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

The North Pacific “Garbage Patch” is home to an abundance of floating sea creatures, as well as the plastic waste it has become famous for, according to a study by Rebecca Helm from Georgetown University, US, and colleagues, publishing April 27th in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

There are five main oceanic gyres — vortexes of water where multiple ocean currents meet — of which the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) is the largest. It is also known as the North Pacific “Garbage Patch”, because converging ocean currents have concentrated large amounts of plastic waste there. However, many floating ocean creatures, such as jellyfish (cnidarians), snails, barnacles and crustaceans, may also use currents to travel through the open ocean, but little is known about where they live.

The researchers took advantage of an 80-day long-distance swim through the NPSG in 2019 to investigate these floating lifeforms, by asking the sailing crew accompanying the expedition to collect samples of surface sea creatures and plastic waste. The expedition’s route was planned using computer simulations of ocean surface currents to predict areas with high concentrations of marine debris. The team collected daily samples of floating life and waste in the eastern NPSG, and found that sea creatures were more abundant inside the NPSG than on the periphery. The occurrence of plastic waste was positively correlated with the abundance of three groups of floating sea creatures: sea rafts (Velella sp), blue sea buttons (Porpita sp) and violet sea snails (Janthina sp).

The same ocean currents that concentrate plastic waste at oceanic gyres may be vital to the life cycles of floating marine organisms, by bringing them together to feed and mate, the authors say. However, human activities could negatively impact these high sea meeting grounds and the wildlife that depends on them.

Helm adds, “The ‘garbage patch’ is more than just a garbage patch. It is an ecosystem, not because of the plastic, but in spite of it.”

Velella. These blue jellies, known as by-the-wind sailors, drift with the wind using a special living sail.

The violet snails Janthina construct floating bubble rafts by dipping their body into the air and trapping one bubble at a time, which they then wrap in mucus and stick to their float.

CREDIT

Denis Riek, The Global Ocean Surface Ecosystem Alliance (GO-SEA) Field Guide (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001646

Citation: Chong F, Spencer M, Maximenko N, Hafner J, McWhirter AC, Helm RR (2023) High concentrations of floating neustonic life in the plastic-rich North Pacific Garbage Patch. PLoS Biol 21(4): e3001646. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001646

Author Countries: United Kingdom, United States

Funding: see manuscript

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JOURNAL

PLoS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3001646 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

Scientists “revive” Stone Age molecules

In a highly transdisciplinary study, scientists are rebuilding microbial natural products up to 100,000 years old using dental calculus of humans and Neanderthals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE FOR NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH AND INFECTION BIOLOGY - HANS KNOELL INSTITUTE -

 

IMAGE: MICROBES ARE NATURE’S GREATEST CHEMISTS, AND BY STUDYING THE GENOMES OF ANCIENT BACTERIA, IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO DISCOVER NEW USES FOR VERY OLD MOLECULES. view more 

CREDIT: WERNER SIEMENS FOUNDATION, FELIX WEY

Breakthroughs in ancient genome reconstruction and biotechnology are now revealing the rich molecular secrets of Paleolithic microorganisms. In a new study published in Science, a transdisciplinary team of researchers led by the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Harvard University reconstructed bacterial genomes of previously unknown bacteria dating to the Pleistocene. Using their genetic blueprints, they built a biotechnology platform to revive the ancient bacteria’s natural products.

Microbes are Nature’s greatest chemists, and among their creations are a large number of the world’s antibiotics and other therapeutic drugs. Producing these complicated chemical natural products is not straightforward, and to do so bacteria rely on specialized kinds of genes that encode enzymatic machinery capable of making such chemicals. At present, scientific study of microbial natural products is largely limited to living bacteria, but given that bacteria have inhabited the earth for more than 3 billion years, there is an enormous diversity of past natural products with therapeutic potential that remain unknown to us – until now.

“In this study, we have reached a major milestone in revealing the vast genetic and chemical diversity of our microbial past,” says co-senior author Christina Warinner, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), and Affiliate Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute of Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). “Our aim is to chart a path for the discovery of ancient natural products and to inform their potential future applications,” adds co-senior author Pierre Stallforth, Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry and Paleobiotechnology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Head of the Department of Paleobiotechnology at the Leibniz-HKI.

A billion-piece jigsaw puzzle

When an organism dies, its DNA rapidly degrades and fragments into a multitude of tiny pieces. Scientists can identify some of these DNA fragments by matching them to databases, but for years microbial archaeologists have struggled with the fact that most ancient DNA cannot be matched to anything known today. This problem has long vexed scientists, but recent advances in computing are now making it possible to refit the DNA fragments together – much like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – in order to reconstruct unknown genes and genomes. The only problem is that it does not work very well on highly degraded and extremely short ancient DNA from the Pleistocene. “We had to completely rethink our approach,” says Alexander Hübner, postdoctoral researcher at the MPI-EVA and co-lead author of the study. Three years of testing and optimization later, Hübner says they reached a breakthrough, achieving stretches of reconstructed DNA more than 100,000 base pairs in length and the recovery of a wide range of ancient genes and genomes. “We can now start with billions of unknown ancient DNA fragments and systematically order them into long-lost bacterial genomes of the Ice Age.”

Exploring the microbial Paleolithic

The team focused on reconstructing bacterial genomes encased within dental calculus, also known as tooth tartar, from 12 Neanderthals dating to ca. 102,000–40,000 years ago, 34 archaeological humans dating to ca. 30,000–150 years ago, and 18 present-day humans. Tooth tartar is the only part of the body that routinely fossilizes during the lifetime, turning living dental plaque into a graveyard of mineralized bacteria. The researchers reconstructed numerous oral bacterial species, as well as other more exotic species whose genomes had not been described before. Among these was an unknown member of Chlorobium, whose highly damaged DNA showed the hallmarks of advanced age, and which was found in the dental calculus of seven Paleolithic humans and Neanderthals. All seven Chlorobium genomes were found to contain a biosynthetic gene cluster of unknown function. “The dental calculus of the 19,000-year-old Red Lady of El Mirón, Spain yielded a particularly well-preserved Chlorobium genome,” says Anan Ibrahim, postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz-HKI and co-lead author of the study. “Having discovered these enigmatic ancient genes, we wanted to take them to the lab to find out what they make”.

Ice Age chemistry

The team used the tools of synthetic molecular biotechnology to allow living bacteria to produce the chemicals encoded by the ancient genes. This was the first time this approach had been successfully applied to ancient bacteria, and it resulted in the discovery of a new family of microbial natural products that the researchers named “paleofurans”. “This is the first step towards accessing the hidden chemical diversity of earth’s past microbes, and it adds an exciting new time dimension to natural product discovery,” says Martin Klapper, postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz-HKI and co-lead author of the study.

A novel collaboration to found a new field

The success of the study is the direct outcome of an ambitious collaboration between archeologists, bioinformaticians, molecular biologists, and chemists to overcome technological and disciplinary barriers and break new scientific ground. “With funding from the Werner Siemens Foundation, we set out to build bridges between the humanities and natural sciences,” says Pierre Stallforth. “By working collaboratively, we were able to develop the technologies needed to recreate molecules produced a hundred thousand years ago,” says Christina Warinner. Looking towards the future, the team hopes to use the technique to find new antibiotics.

Using ancient DNA, biochemists have succeeded in producing molecules - paleofurans (shown here in powder form).

CREDIT

Anna Schroll/Leibniz-HKI

Dental calculus (tooth tartar) preserves DNA over millennia, providing unprecedented information about the biodiversity and functional capabilities of ancient microbes.

CREDIT

Werner Siemens Foundation, Felix Wey

Collaboration between the fields of paleogenomics and chemistry is ushering in a new field of study: paleobiotechnology.

Modern bioinformatical methods enable reconstruction of ancient molecules 

The evaluation and reconstruction of degraded DNA is a huge bioinformatics challenge.

CREDIT

Anna Schroll/Leibniz-HKI

A particularly well-preserved genome belongs to the "Red Lady of El Mirón"  

Entrance to the El Mirón cave, Spain, where 18,800-year-old “Red Lady” human remains were found.

CREDIT

L.G. Straus

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf5300 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Natural products from reconstructed bacterial genomes of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-May-2023

Scientists begin to unravel global role of atmospheric dust in nourishing oceans

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: AUSTRALIA DUST. view more 

CREDIT: NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research led by an Oregon State University scientist begins to unravel the role dust plays in nourishing global ocean ecosystems while helping regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Researchers have long known that phytoplankton – plantlike organisms that live in the upper part of the ocean and are the foundation of the marine food web – rely on dust from land-based sources for key nutrients. But the extent and magnitude of the impact of the dust – particles from sources such as soil that are lifted by the wind and impact the Earth’s climate – have been difficult to estimate globally.

“This is really the first time it has been shown, using the modern observational record and at the global scale, that the nutrients carried by dust being deposited on the ocean are creating a response in the surface ocean biology,” said Toby Westberry, an oceanographer at Oregon State and lead author of the just-published paper in Science.

The ocean plays an important role in the carbon cycle; carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves in surface waters, where phytoplankton turn the carbon into organic matter through photosynthesis. Some of the newly formed organic matter sinks from the surface ocean to the deep sea, where it is locked away, a pathway known as the biological pump.

In the new paper, Westberry and other scientists from Oregon State; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center estimate deposition of dust supports 4.5% of the global annual export production, or sink, of carbon. Regional variation in this contribution can be much higher, approaching 20% to 40%, they found.

“That’s important because it’s a pathway to get carbon out of the atmosphere and down into the deep ocean,” Westberry said. “The biological pump is one of the key controls on atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is a dominant factor driving global warming and climate change.”

In the ocean, vital nutrients for phytoplankton growth are largely provided through the physical movement of those nutrients from deep waters up to the surface, a process known as mixing or upwelling. But some nutrients are also provided through atmospheric dust.

To date, the understanding of the response by natural marine ecosystems to atmospheric inputs has been limited to singularly large events, such as wildfires, volcanic eruptions and extreme dust storms. In fact, previous research by Westberry and others examined ecosystem responses following the 2008 eruption on Kasatochi Island in southwestern Alaska.

In the new paper, Westberry and Michael Behrenfeld, an Oregon State professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, along with scientists from UMBC and NASA built on this past research to look at phytoplankton response worldwide.

Westberry and Behrenfeld focused their efforts on using satellite data to examine changes in ocean color following dust inputs. Ocean color imagery is collected across the global ocean every day and reports changes in the abundance of phytoplankton and their overall health. For example, greener water generally corresponds to abundant and healthy phytoplankton populations, while bluer waters represent regions where phytoplankton are scarce and often undernourished.

The scientists at UMBC and NASA focused their efforts on modeling dust transport and deposition to the ocean surface.

“Determining how much dust is deposited into the ocean is hard, because much of the deposition occurs during rainstorms when satellites cannot see the dust. That is why we turned to a model,” said UMBC’s Lorraine Remer, research professor at the Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research Center II, a consortium led by UMBC. The UMBC team used observations to confirm a NASA global model before incorporating its results into the study.

Working together, the research team found that the response of phytoplankton to dust deposition varies based on location.

In low-latitude ocean regions, the signature of dust input is predominately seen as an improvement in phytoplankton health, but not abundance. In contrast, phytoplankton in higher-latitude waters often show improved health and increased abundance when dust is provided. This contrast reflects differing relationships between phytoplankton and the animals that eat them.

Lower latitude environments tend to be more stable, leading to a tight balance between phytoplankton growth and predation. Thus, when dust improves phytoplankton health, or growth rate, this new production is rapidly consumed and almost immediately transferred up the food chain.

At higher latitudes, the link between phytoplankton and their predators is weaker because of constantly changing environmental conditions. Accordingly, when dust stimulates phytoplankton growth, the predators are a step behind, and the phytoplankton populations exhibit both improved health and increased abundance.

The research team is continuing this research, bringing in improved modeling tools and preparing for more advanced satellite data from NASA’s upcoming Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite mission, some of which will be collected by the UMBC-designed and -built HARP2 instrument.

“The current analysis demonstrates measurable ocean biological responses to an enormous dynamic range in atmospheric inputs,” Westberry said. “We anticipate that, as the planet continues to warm, this link between the atmosphere and oceans will change.”

China dust.

Africa dust on June 18, 2020

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite.

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abq5252 

ARTICLE TITLE

Atmospheric nourishment of global ocean ecosystems

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-May-2023

Chemical signal protects migratory locusts from cannibalism

Migratory locusts release a toxic substance to fend off their own conspecifics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

 

IMAGE: A MIGRATORY LOCUST LOCUSTA MIGRATORIA EATS A CONSPECIFIC. CANNIBALISM IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE MAIN DRIVERS OF THE DEVASTATING SWARMING BEHAVIOR OF LOCUSTS. view more 

CREDIT: BENJAMIN FABIAN, MPI FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

Huge swarms of migratory locusts take on the proportions of natural disasters and threaten the food supply of millions of people, especially in Africa and Asia.  As the eighth of the ten biblical plagues, the Book of Moses in the Old Testament already describes how swarms of locusts darkened the sky and ate up everything that grew in the fields and on the trees.  Scientists suspect that cannibalism among locusts contributes to their swarming behavior, and swarms therefore constantly move on because individual animals are always on the run from conspecifics pursuing them. "We wondered how these insects influence each other's behavior within huge swarms, and whether olfaction plays a role. An important basis for us was the research on the formation of locust swarms by Iain Couzin of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology in Constance," says study leader Bill Hansson, director of the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the Max Planck Institute, explaining the starting point of the study.

Migratory locusts occur in different phases: In the solitary phase, the insects live individually and stay in the area, while in the gregarious phase they exhibit the typical swarming behavior that fits their denomination as migratory locusts. "In most cases, locusts are in the solitary phase, where they avoid physical contact with conspecifics and eat comparatively little food. If the population density increases due to rainfall and sufficient food, the locusts change their behavior within a few hours; they can smell, see, and touch each other. These three types of stimulation increase serotonin and dopamine levels in the locust brain, causing solitary locusts to become aggressive gregarious locusts that are very active and have a large appetite.  They also release aggregation pheromones, which eventually leads to swarming and poses a huge threat to agricultural production. Cannibalism does only occur in the gregarious phase," explains the study's first author Hetan Chang.

Behavioral experiments with the migratory locust Locusta migratoria showed that cannibalism rates increased with the number of gregarious animals that were kept together in a cage. Thus, there is a direct relationship between population density and cannibalistic behavior.  To find out if gregarious locusts emit particular odors that are not produced in the solitary phase, the research team analyzed and compared all odors emitted by solitary and gregarious locust in the juvenile stage. Of the 17 odors produced exclusively in the gregarious phase, only phenylacetonitrile (PAN) turned out to be an odor signal that deterred other locusts in behavioral tests. For further confirmation of PAN's function, the scientists used genetically modified locusts that could no longer produce PAN. "We showed that as population density increased, not only did the level of cannibalism rise, but the animals also produced more PAN. Using genome editing, we were able to knock out an enzyme responsible for the production of this compound. This allowed us to confirm its strong anti-cannibalistic effect, because cannibalism was again significantly increased when the animals were no longer able to produce the compound," says Hetan Chang.

The biggest challenge was finding the olfactory receptor that recognizes PAN. Since locusts have more than 140 olfactory receptor genes, the research team had to clone as many genes as possible and test them one by one. Tests on 49 different olfactory receptors using more than 200 relevant odors eventually led to the identification of the olfactory receptor OR70a as a highly sensitive and specific detector of PAN in the migratory locust Locusta migratoria. Behavioral experiments with genetically modified locusts whose OR70a receptor was no longer functioning again showed a strongly increased cannibalism rate, which is due to the fact that the cannibalism stop signal can no longer be perceived by the locusts without the corresponding receptor.

A pheromone that controls cannibalism is an absolute new discovery. Because cannibalism has a major impact on locust swarm dynamics, a fundamental understanding of the population ecology of these animals, particularly the effect of PAN, opens up new possibilities of locust control. "If you inhibit the production of PAN or the function of the receptor, you could get the locusts to behave more cannibalistically and potentially control themselves in that way," Bill Hansson says.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ade6155 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A chemical defense deters cannibalism in migratory locusts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-May-2023