U.S. flagAn official website of the United States government
                    Here's how you know **Official websites use .gov**
                            
                            A **.gov** website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
 **Secure .gov websites use HTTPS**
                            
                            A **lock** (                            
                              A locked padlock                                                      
                            
                            ) or **https://** means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Menu Agricultural Research Service
						
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
 close



Research
                Research Home
                            National Programs
                            Research Projects
                            Scientific Manuscripts
                            International Engagement
                            Scientific Software/Models
                            Databases and Datasets
                            Office of Scientific Quality Review
            Media
                News & Features
                            Multimedia
                            Briefing Room
                            Down on the Farm
                            Press Room
                            Science in Your Shopping Cart
                            Scientific Discoveries
                            Tellus
                            Under the Microscope
            About ARS
                About ARS Home
                            Staff Directory
                            Labs and Research Centers (Map)
                            Headquarter Offices
                            Organizational Chart
                            Employee Services (REE Employees Only)
                            Office of Outreach, Diversity, and Equal Opportunity
            Work With Us
                Work With Us Home
                            ARS Vacancies at USAJOBS
                            Careers at ARS Information
                            Scientific Collaborations
                            Extramural Agreements
                            1890 Faculty Research Sabbatical ProgramSearch small
                    Search
            
            ARS Home
                                About ARS
                                Contact Us




ARS Home News & Events News Articles Research News 2005





- ARS News & Events
- AgResearch Magazine
- Image Gallery
- News
- Search News & Events
- Pesticide Drift May Endanger Pollinators
- ARS Seeks a Fire Ant Fix
- Scientific Discoveries 2024
- ARS Featured Photos
- Down on the Farm
- Facebook Live Events
- Food and Nutrition Research Briefs
- News Archive
- Science in Your Shopping Cart
- Scientific Discoveries
- Social Media
- Under the Microscope
- AgResearch magazine
- ARS at Work
- ARS Memorial Lectures
- ARS Science Hall of Fame
- Citrus Disease (Huanglongbing)
- Contact Office of Communications
- Plant Hardiness Zone Map
- Mobile Apps
- Public Affairs Contacts
- Publications and Other Resources
- USDA Blog
- Videos

Archived Page
 This page has been archived and is being provided for reference purposes only. The page is no longer being updated, and therefore, links on the page may be invalid.
 A radio transmitter attached to the back of a Mormon cricket helps researchers determine its movement in the field. Click the image for more information about it. For Some Insects, It's Smart to Run With the Crowd Erin Peabody  To the casual observer, the millions of swarming locusts that descended on West Africa last year were like something straight out of a science fiction novel. Several mile-wide bands of the voracious insects ate their way through the region's crop lands, threatening to cause food shortages and loss of income for local farmers. Now, Gregory Sword, an ecologist with the Agricultural Research Service, has an explanation for why some insects, like the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, gather in mind-boggling numbers and move together across the landscape. In the current issue of the journal Nature, Sword describes how the Mormon cricket--a species of katydid known to periodically overrun agricultural fields in the Northern Plains of the United States--relies on the protection afforded by thousands, if not millions, of its fellow crickets to reduce the risk of attack by predators. Researchers have speculated that insects moving in bands derive some benefits from traveling en masse. But no one has previously attempted to quantify those advantages, mostly because of the inherent difficulty in tracking how individual insects move within a band of millions. Sword, who works at the ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory in Sidney, Mont., teamed with colleagues Patrick Lorch of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Darryl Gwynne of the University of Toronto at Mississauga to use radio transmitters to monitor the movements of individual Mormon crickets during a study last year near Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. The researchers discovered that for the crickets, there's safety in large numbers. Those insects which were part of a large moving band were much less likely to be eaten. In fact, 50 to 60 percent of the Mormon crickets that were separated from a migratory band were killed within two days by predators such as birds and rodents, while none of those staying with the band were eaten. Radio transmitters belonging to those unfortunate, lone insects were found either chewed or still glued to a partially-eaten cricket corpse. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.


Return to top


Research
                            Media
                            About ARS
                            Work With Us


Connect with ARS Sign up


ARS Home
                            USDA.gov
                            Plain Writing
                            Policies & Links
                            Civil Rights Statements
                            FOIA
                            Accessibility Statement
                            Privacy Policy
                            Non-Discrimination Statement
                            Quality of Information
                            USA.gov
                            WhiteHouse.gov