Adults commonly about 45–60 mm.
Fine-art photographic collection
Schistocerca gregaria
The same insect can switch from shy loner to marching, colour-changing swarm member within hours.
About this species
Desert Locust
Schistocerca gregaria(Forskål, 1775)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Schistocerca gregaria is the desert locust. Under sparse conditions individuals avoid one another, but rain-driven population growth and crowding can trigger a profound shift into the gregarious swarming phase.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Orthoptera · Acrididae · Schistocerca
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
arid Africa, the Middle East and southwest AsiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
arid Africa, the Middle East and southwest Asia
Deserts, semi-deserts and seasonally green arid zones.
Diurnal; migrating swarms travel by day and settle at night.
A very wide range of green vegetation and crops.
Not colonial, but gregarious-phase individuals form marching bands and immense flying swarms.
What makes this species remarkable?
Repeated crowding can transform avoidance into attraction in roughly four hours, with serotonin helping trigger the first rapid behavioural switch.
Phase change alters not only behaviour but colour, body proportions and physiology — two radically different-looking lifestyles produced by the same genome.
A swarm covering one square kilometre may contain tens of millions of adults and can consume roughly the same amount of food in a day as tens of thousands of people.