LONDON (Reuters) - A brain chemical that lifts people out of depression can transform solitary grasshoppers into swarming desert locusts, a finding that could one day help prevent the devastating plagues, researchers said on Thursday.
Increases of serotonin, the nerve-signaling chemical targeted by many antidepressants, appears to spark the behavior changes needed to turn the normally harmless insects into bugs that gang up to munch crops, they said.
"Our paper shows how this change in behavior changes what are essentially large grasshoppers living in the desert into swarming, destructive pests," said University of Cambridge researcher Stephen Rogers, who worked on the study.
"For a swarm to develop the locusts must transform from a solitary phase into a gregarious phase."
Vast swarms containing billions of locusts stretching over dozens of square kilometers periodically devastated parts of the United States when the West was settled and they continue to inflict economic hardship on parts of Africa and China.
The last big African swarm in 2004 cost $400 million simply to eradicate the pests, a tab that did not included money lost to destroyed crops, Rogers added.
"The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger, and swarming is a response to find pastures new," he said.
Rogers and colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Science, wanted to find out what triggered the behavior change, which occurs when the insects gather in close quarters.
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