Dataset Information

Information integration for decision-making in desert locusts.

ABSTRACT: Locust swarms can extend over hundred kilometers, and starvation compels this ancient pest to devour everything in its path. Theory suggests that gregarious behavior benefits foraging efficiency, yet the role of social cohesion remains elusive. To this end, we collected high-resolution trajectories of individual and grouped gregarious desert locusts in a 2-choice assay with patches of either similar or different quality. Carefully maintaining animals' identities allowed us to monitor each individual's experience and estimate the leaky accumulation process of personally acquired and socially derived evidence. We fitted data to a Bayesian model to gain insight into the decision-making system for patch selection. By disentangling the relative contribution of each information class, our study suggests that locusts balance incongruent evidence but reinforce congruent ones. We provide insight into the collective foraging decisions of social (but non-eusocial) insects and present locusts as a powerful empirical system to study individual choices and consequent collective dynamics.

SUBMITTER: Gunzel Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10074146 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Information integration for decision-making in desert locusts.

Günzel Yannick Y Oberhauser Felix B FB Couzin-Fuchs Einat E

iScience 20230313 4

Locust swarms can extend over hundred kilometers, and starvation compels this ancient pest to devour everything in its path. Theory suggests that gregarious behavior benefits foraging efficiency, yet the role of social cohesion remains elusive. To this end, we collected high-resolution trajectories of individual and grouped gregarious desert locusts in a 2-choice assay with patches of either similar or different quality. Carefully maintaining animals' identities allowed us to monitor each indivi ...[more]

PMID: 37034978

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Project description:Phenotypic plasticity allows animals to modify their behavior, physiology, and morphology to adapt to environmental change. The global pest, the desert locust, shows two extreme phenotypes; a solitarious phase that is relatively harmless and a gregarious phase that forms swarms and causes extensive agricultural and economic damage. In the field, environmental conditions can drive isolated animals into crowded populations and previous studies have identified the biogenic amine serotonin as a key determinant of this transition. Here we take an integrated approach to investigate the neurochemical, physiological, and behavioral correlates defined by a laboratory based paradigm that mimics facets of swarm break down as gregarious locusts become isolated. Following isolation there was an increased propensity of locusts to avoid conspecifics, and show a reduced locomotion. Changes in choice behavior occurred within 1 h of isolation although isolation-related changes progressed with increased isolation time. Isolation was accompanied by changes in the levels of the biogenic amines dopamine, octopamine, and serotonin within the CNS within 1 h. Dopamine levels were higher in isolated animals and we focused on the role played by this transmitter in synaptic changes that may underpin solitarization. Dopamine reduced synaptic efficacy at a key central synapse between campaniform sensilla (CS) and a fast extensor tibiae motor neuron that is involved in limb movement. We also show that dopamine injection into the haemocoel was sufficient to induce solitarious-like behavior in otherwise gregarious locusts. Further, injection of a dopamine antagonist, fluphenazine, into isolated locusts induced gregarious-like behavior. This highlights that dopaminergic modulation plays an important role in the plasticity underpinning phase transition and sets a context to deepen the understanding of the complementary role that distinct neuromodulators play in polyphenism in locusts.

Dataset Information

Information integration for decision-making in desert locusts.

Publications

Information integration for decision-making in desert locusts.

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