Exploring Nutrient Availability and Herbivorous Insect Population Dynamics Across Multiple Scales

Douglas Lawton¹†, Jenni Learned², Cathy Waters³, Ian Toole⁴, Natalia Thompson⁵, Chase Hales⁶, Chris Adriaansen⁷, Ted Deveson⁷^,⁸, Stephen J. Simpson⁹, Arianne Cease¹^,¹⁰

1. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
   
2. Mau Nui Seabird Recovery Project, Makawao, HI, USA
   
3. GreenCollar, 3 Hickson Road, The Rocks, Sydney, NSW, Australia
   
4. NSW Department of Primary Industries, Trangie, NSW, Australia
   
5. School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
   
6. School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
   
7. Australian Plague Locust Commission, Fyshwick, ACT, Australia
   
8. Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, ACT, Australia
   
9. School of Life and Environmental Science Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
   
10. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

†Corresponding Author:
Douglas Lawton
School of Sustainability
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85282
Email: ddlawton1@gmail.com

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Authors’ contributions

DL led the writing and data analysis with input from AC. AC and JL designed and carried out the field experiments. CW and SS helped with experimental design and provided logistical support in Australia. IT collected data and provided logistical support in Australia. NT oversaw and conducted all chemical analyses with support from JL. CH provided GIS and remote sensing support. AC originally conceived the field experiment ideas and methodology. TD and CA provided logistical support in identifying outbreaking locust bands throughout New South Wales, Australia. TD led data curation and interpretation of the historical locust dataset. All authors contributed to final manuscript preparation.

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation grants NSF IOS-1942054 and DEB-1313693 and the 2018 Australia-Americas PhD Research Internship Program of the Australian Academy of Science.

Acknowledgements

For field assistance, we thank the staff at the Trangie Agriculture Research Centre, specifically: Warren Smith. For logistical support at Arizona State University, we thank the business departments of the School of Life Sciences and the School of Sustainability. For identifying locust outbreaks, we thank NSW Local Land Services Senior Biosecurity Officers, Rhett Robinson and Mal Leeson. For statistical and GIS support, we thank Gavin Melville, Marja Simpson, Kim Broadfoot, and the NSW Department of Primary Industry’s climate research team. We thank Research Computing at Arizona State University for providing HPC and storage resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. We thank the Trangie, NSW community. Arizona State University resides on the traditional homelands of the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash peoples whose land stewardship we benefit from daily. This research was conducted on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri nation, and we pay our respect to Elders both past, present and future. We thank the larger Global Locust Initiative Laboratory community for engagement and feedback on earlier versions of this study. Lastly, we thank the Guntawang ranch for permission to collect locust from their property.

Data Archiving

Soil data is freely available and can be acquired on this website:
https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SLGA/GetData.html.
As per the Australian Plague Locust Commission guidelines, the Australian plague locust dataset cannot be made publicly available as it requires specific explanation to understand some aspects of its contents. Those who are interested in these data should submit a request to the APLC. All field population and cage experiment data will be made available on the github repo at the time of publication.