Locusta migratoria

The migratory locust (Locusta migratoria) is the most widespread locust species, and the only species in the genus Locusta. It occurs throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It used to be common in Europe but has now become rare there. Because of the vast geographic area it occupies, which comprises many different ecological zones, numerous subspecies have been described. However, not all experts agree on the validity of some of these subspecies. Locusts are highly mobile, and usually fly with the wind at a speed of about 15 to 20 kilometres per hour (9.3 to 12.4 mph). Swarms can travel 5 to 130 km or more in a day. Locust swarms can vary from less than one square kilometre to several hundred square kilometres with 40 to 80 million individuals per square kilometre. An adult locust can consume its own weight (several grams) in fresh food per day. For every million locusts, one ton of food is eaten. Despite their relevance, both in their unique biology and their impact on human societies, no genome assembly with gene predictions is available for Locusta. Here we provide such an assembly with gene predictions so that it can be manually curated by the community and guide future research efforts.

This genome assembly (Lm_assembly2-2.fasta) is a scaffold assembly derived from the GenBank contig assembly GCA_000516895.1. The corresponding NCBI TPA accession will be released after the publication embargo is lifted.