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Serotonin and Metamorphosis


"A collaboration between a team of scientists in Cambridge and Oxford, UK and Sydney, Australia has identified an increase in the chemical serotonin in specific parts of the insects' nervous system as initiating the key changes in behaviour that cause them to swarm.
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Locusts belong to the grasshopper family but unlike their harmless relatives they have the unusual ability to live in either a solitary or a gregarious state, with the genetic instructions for both packaged within a single genome.
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In deserts, however, the rains are not sustained and food soon becomes more and more sparse. Thus large numbers of locusts are funnelled into dwindling patches of remaining vegetation where they are forced into close contact with each other. This crowding triggers a dramatic and rapid change in the locusts' behaviour: they become very mobile and they actively seek the company of other locusts. This new behaviour keeps the crowd together while the insects acquire distinctly different colours and large muscles that equip them for prolonged flights in swarms.
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The new research, which was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Royal Society, solved this 90 year old question by identifying an increase in the chemical serotonin in specific parts of the locust's nervous system as launching the fundamental changes in behaviour that lead to the gregarious phase."

in http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/a-brain-chemical-changes-locusts-from-harmless-grasshoppers-to-swarming-pests


Obrigado RTP2