On the relative role of climate change and management in the current desert locust outbreak in East Africa

Meynard, Christine N.; Lecoq, Michel; Chapuis, Marie Pierre; Piou, Cyril

doi:10.1111/gcb.15137

Cited by 66 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…While SSA countries have very high potential for maize and rice production (Fig. 2), the impacts of climate change [44][45][46] and recent locust invasion 47,48 coupled with COVID-19 movement restrictions are likely to reduce the production potential 49 . Fig.…”

Section: Environmental and Pest Challenges Overlapped The Movement Rementioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications of lockdown during agricultural planting seasons

2020

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COVID-19 pandemic movement restrictions as part of the control measures put in place by countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has implications on food security, as movement restrictions coincided with planting periods for most of the staple crops. The measures are affecting important staple crops in SSA, and are likely to exacerbate food security challenges in many countries. Achieving adequate food supply in SSA requires developing better policies and packages to confronting the challenge of reducing hunger post COVID-19 pandemic. The lessons learned after COVID-19 crisis will be very important for African countries to rethink their strategies and policies for sustainable economic growth, as COVID-19 many have significant impacts on all sectors of their economies.

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Section: Environmental and Pest Challenges Overlapped The Movement Rementioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications of lockdown during agricultural planting seasons

2020

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“…Similarly, effective early intervention in Iran would have spared Pakistan and India. The episode illustrates how a chain of worsening desert locust population events resulted because of unpreparedness and insecurity in a few countries [109]. The episode also demonstrates that proactive interventions, which occurred in many of the afflicted countries, impeded significant spread beyond their borders [72,73,[92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107].…”

Section: Conclusion: New Upsurgementioning

confidence: 99%

Early Intervention against Desert Locusts: Current Proactive Approach and the Prospect of Sustainable Outbreak Prevention

et al. 2021

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The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskål) (Orthoptera: Acrididae), a major Old World pest, is associated with agricultural losses and undesirable societal effects. There are three broad approaches to its control: reaction, proaction, and outbreak prevention. Reaction protects crops from swarms but it is costly and disruptive. Proaction involves early intervention during outbreaks to avert further development to plague status; it is in current use because it is effective, relatively inexpensive, and it is the best available option for now. Outbreak prevention, largely unavailable since the 1970s, at least on a regional scale, will require highly sensitive surveillance to detect the onset of gregarization. Sufficiently early intervention can, hypothetically, extend desert locust recession indefinitely. While research on desert locust biology and behavior is, almost, no longer an urgent requirement to improve the efficacy of control, new priorities have arisen for developing outbreak prevention capability (and for enhancing proaction). Salient needs presently include long residual tactics for prophylactic (preventive) control in breeding areas, intervention thresholds, and improved, sustainable coordination among stakeholders at national, regional, and international levels. The most recent desert locust episode of 2020 provides an illustrative example of how prevention might have averted the entire upsurge, and how proaction in some countries contained the spread of swarms. The initial outbreak in Saudi Arabia escaped control due to unpreparedness, and impacts of armed conflict in Somalia and Yemen, which weakened surveillance and control, further contributed to the invasion of ≥22 countries, and the spraying of ≈4.9 million ha, by the end of 2020.

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“…Human activities in turn affect the propensity of locusts to swarm through factors such as land use (e.g. agriculture, wood extraction, urbanization), political relations between affected countries and the effects of climate change (FAO Locust Watch, http://www.fao.org/ag/locusts/en/info/info/index.html ; Cullen et al , 2017 ; Meynard et al , 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First draft genome assembly of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria

Verlinden¹,

Sterck

et al. 2020

F1000Res

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Background: At the time of publication, the most devastating desert locust crisis in decades is affecting East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and South-West Asia. The situation is extremely alarming in East Africa, where Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia face an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods. Most of the time, however, locusts do not occur in swarms, but live as relatively harmless solitary insects. The phenotypically distinct solitarious and gregarious locust phases differ markedly in many aspects of behaviour, physiology and morphology, making them an excellent model to study how environmental factors shape behaviour and development. A better understanding of the extreme phenotypic plasticity in desert locusts will offer new, more environmentally sustainable ways of fighting devastating swarms. Methods: High molecular weight DNA derived from two adult males was used for Mate Pair and Paired End Illumina sequencing and PacBio sequencing. A reliable reference genome of Schistocerca gregaria was assembled using the ABySS pipeline, scaffolding was improved using LINKS. Results: In total, 1,316 Gb Illumina reads and 112 Gb PacBio reads were produced and assembled. The resulting draft genome consists of 8,817,834,205 bp organised in 955,015 scaffolds with an N50 of 157,705 bp, making the desert locust genome the largest insect genome sequenced and assembled to date. In total, 18,815 protein-encoding genes are predicted in the desert locust genome, of which 13,646 (72.53%) obtained at least one functional assignment based on similarity to known proteins. Conclusions: The desert locust genome data will contribute greatly to studies of phenotypic plasticity, physiology, neurobiology, molecular ecology, evolutionary genetics and comparative genomics, and will promote the desert locust’s use as a model system. The data will also facilitate the development of novel, more sustainable strategies for preventing or combating swarms of these infamous insects.

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On the relative role of climate change and management in the current desert locust outbreak in East Africa

Cited by 66 publications

References 7 publications

COVID-19 and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications of lockdown during agricultural planting seasons

COVID-19 and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications of lockdown during agricultural planting seasons

Early Intervention against Desert Locusts: Current Proactive Approach and the Prospect of Sustainable Outbreak Prevention

First draft genome assembly of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria

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