Nature

A single touch on its leg can turn a lone desert locust into a swarming monster

Desert locusts exist in two dramatically different forms - shy solitary insects and gregarious swarming ones - controlled by the same genome. Touching, seeing, or smelling other locusts triggers a surge of serotonin in their nervous system within hours, flipping them from avoidance to attraction and rapid activity. This single neurochemical switch is what turns scattered insects into a coordinated plague of billions.

Michael L. Anstey, Stephen M. Rogers, Swidbert R. Ott, Malcolm Burrows, Stephen J. Simpson, Serotonin Mediates Behavioral Gregarization Underlying Swarm Formation in Desert Locusts — Science, vol. 323, pp. 627-630, 2009

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