Mother knows best: Unraveling the chemical identity of the compound responsible for maternal effect in the desert locust

Monday, November 14, 2022

8:48 AM – 9:00 AM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 301

Presenting Author(s)

Vivian A. Peralta Santana

Ph.D Student
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas

Co-Author(s)

Hojun Song

Professor
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas

The Desert Locust, Schistocerca gregaria, displays incredible density-dependent polyphenism. Gregarious and solitarious locusts differ tremendously in behavior and morphology, among other phenotypic characteristics. In S. gregaria, the cascade of changes is driven by the presence of olfactory, visual, and tactile stimuli from other conspecifics. Not only do these traits fluctuate in response to population density but, also are heritable across generations through a maternal effect. Female locusts can influence the phase status of their offspring based on their life experience of density conditions by releasing a chemical agent into their egg foam. Gregarious and solitarious females can, to a certain extent, produce hatchlings of the opposite phase state after experiencing changes in density relative to the time of oviposition. Moreover, solitarious females do not need to experience crowding directly to produce gregarious offspring. Mating with a crowded male is enough to produce a high percentage of behaviorally gregarious hatchlings. The chemical identity of the agent behind these changes remains unknown but experimental work suggests that an alkylated L-dopa analogue compound might be responsible. In order to verify this, we plan to bathe crowded eggs with a dopamine antagonist and solitarious eggs with L-dopa analogue. If this is the compound responsible it should stop or promote phase change in the hatchlings. This work will set the tone for future epigenetic studies on both swarming and non-swarming species in the genus Schistocerca.