MCA: Leveraging nutritional ecophysiology and modeling to improve understanding of how environmental nutrients mediate the impacts of global change on locust swarms

This project will improve our ability to predict and manage agricultural pest outbreaks by linking the study of how insects use nutrients with how nitrogen changes in the environment. Locusts are grasshoppers that can transform into large swarms, causing massive agricultural losses and threatening food security around the world. Poor land practices, like overgrazing, decrease the amount of nitrogen in plants, which unexpectedly encourages locusts to form destructive swarms. By using computer modeling, this project will connect how locusts choose and use foods, how nitrogen cycles through their environments, and how these factors interact across large areas over time. These insights are important not just for science, but for society, because understanding when, where, and why locust swarms occur can help farmers, local communities, and organizations better prepare for and respond to these unpredictable, damaging events. The project will also train university students and build partnerships with groups on the front lines of protecting crops, ensuring the research has a direct, positive impact on food security and sustainable land management. This Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) offers a unique training opportunity for a mid-career faculty member, expanding her capacity to connect her research on how organisms use nutrients to large landscape-scale models. The PI has led interdisciplinary efforts exploring links between land use, livelihoods, agricultural markets, and locust outbreaks, advancing both fundamental science and its practical use in agriculture. Contrary to the common assumption of a positive relationship between nitrogen concentration and herbivore performance, her team’s work uncovered that nitrogen-depleted environments promote swarms by providing locusts with low-protein, high-carbohydrate plants that fuel their high activity levels. However, connecting locust nutrition to nitrogen cycling at landscape scales remains a major challenge. This MCA will address this gap through three objectives, all supported by two expert partners: 1) Research training for the PI in modeling and handling large datasets, 2) Development of mechanistic niche models that integrate nutritional ecophysiology to improve predictions of the development of gregarious phenotypes and locust swarms, 3) Use of agent-based models to investigate how ecosystem nitrogen cycling influences the development and movement of swarms across landscapes. The results will be translated through collaborations with plant protection organizations responsible for monitoring and managing locusts, ensuring a tangible, real-world impact. In addition, this MCA training will have lasting impacts on the PI’s future teaching, mentoring, and collaborations throughout her expected 25+ years as a professor at the largest public university in the US. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.