We need to talk about the locusts

Jurassic World Dominion Locust Animatronic, Image Source: DR

One of the main and most controversial plot points in Jurassic World Dominion is the use of genetically modified locusts with ancient DNA to ravage crops that were not planted using seeds sold by Biosyn, a genetics company, and the main antagonist of the movie.

Lewis Dodgson, the head of Biosyn, had the idea to use these locusts to destroy the competition and ensure that farmers only bought seeds sold by his company. However, things don’t go according to plan and the genetically modified locusts get out of control and start ravaging crops all across North America.

The remainder of the film then revolves around finding a solution to end this plague of biblical proportions before it manages to consume the World’s food supply.

So, are these locusts based on any real extinct species? Can we genetically modify insects? And does the solution cooked up by Dr. Henry Wu have any real World science to back it up?

How to become a fossil in four easy steps

Insects, and invertebrates in general, have a very incomplete fossil record, filled with gaps at times spanning hundreds of millions of years. In fact, we are lucky that some species have managed to fossilize at all.

This happens because insects are small and their bodies are too fragile to be preserved as fossils. However, insects do have a tough external skeleton that, under the right conditions, can be preserved as fossils.

The process of fossilization requires a very specific set of steps and conditions that actually makes it rare for an animal, regardless of its size, to fossilize. First, we need the animal to die close to a water source, like a lake, a swamp, a slow-moving river, or the sea bed, and for it to be buried quickly in a sedimentary basin before the natural process of decomposition begins, and before its body gets the chance to be eaten by scavengers.

For better preservation, a low oxygen environment is your best option. Then, as time passes the sedimentary basin hardens into rock and the bones are replaced with minerals, giving us an imprint of the animal.

Since insects are very small they would have to be buried very quickly in a low oxygen environment with minimal bacteria, in order to guarantee their bodies are not decomposed.

When paleontologists find a sedimentary deposit that exhibits exceptionally well-preserved fossils they call it a Lagerstätte, a German word that aptly means ‘a place of storage’.

One of the most famous fossils found in a Lagerstätte deposit was Archaeopteryx, discovered in 1861 in limestone deposits near Solnhofen, in Germany. Known as the first bird, Archaeopteryx was so well-preserved, that it still had most of its feathers, making it one of the earliest fossil evidence of the relation between dinosaurs and birds.

And, as popularized by the original Jurassic Park, insects can also be preserved in amber. Amber is fossilized tree resin that, like other fossils, was quickly buried in a layer of sediment before it could decompose, preserving everything that got trapped inside it.

Unlike what is said in the movie, however, being preserved in amber actually accelerates DNA degradation. Sorry, that mosquito may look like it had just finished feeding on the closest dinosaur, but whatever dino-DNA it may have carried is now long gone.

Even though a high number of improbable steps need to be taken for an insect to fossilize, paleontologists have in fact found quite a few in the last two centuries.

And locusts just happen to be one of those lucky specimens.

Prehistoric Locusts

Locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets belong to an order of insects called orthoptera, meaning ‘straight wings’. This order is divided into two suborders, ensifera, which includes crickets, katydids, and other insects, and caelifera, which includes locusts and grasshoppers.

Fossil and genetic data suggest that these two suborders split right at the end of the Permian, 250 million years ago, making them contemporaries of Lystrosaurus and other therapsids, mammalian ancestors that are also featured in the latest installment of the Jurassic World franchise.

Just recently a 300 million-year-old fossil locust was found in São Pedro da Cova, Portugal. Named Lusitadischia sai, this new species is now one of the oldest known members of this insect family. Its size was, however, rather modest, when compared with some of the monstrous insects of the Carboniferous, only growing to about 6 centimeters (2 in) in length.

In Jurassic World Dominion Biosyn’s genetically modified locusts were as big as a common house cat. The biggest locust alive today is the hedge grasshopper (Valanga irregularis) also known as the giant grasshopper. It’s native to Australia and females can grow up to 9 cm (3.5 in) long, about a third the size of the ones featured in this film. What about their dinosaur-aged ancestors?

Most modern families of locusts such as Eumastacidae, Tetrigidae, and Tridactylidae appeared during the Cretaceous, meaning that the locusts featured in the film did have ancient counterparts during the reign of the dinosaurs. These however were not very impressive in size.

Insects are not very effective in the way they transport oxygen from the air to their organs, meaning that their size is highly dependent on the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. For most of the Mesozoic, and particularly during the Cretaceous, oxygen levels on Earth were closer to what they are today, meaning that most insects, including locusts and grasshoppers, couldn’t grow much larger than modern species.

In the movie we also see these locusts flying in a large swarm spreading through several miles over the continental US. In 1954 the Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria) ravaged Kenya in a swarm that covered over 200 square kilometers (77 square miles).

It’s hard to tell if ancient locusts swarmed like they do today since this behavior is not one that would fossilize well. However, the similarities between modern and Mesozoic species give scientists enough evidence to conclude that swarming behavior was probably well established during the Cretaceous.

You never had control, that’s the illusion!

In Jurassic World Dominion Dr. Henry Wu’s solution to deal with the swarm of Biosyn locusts is to introduce into the wild locusts with a special genetic trigger that could spread throughout the swarm and kill every single one of them.

This is actually based in real-world science. Today there are genetically modified mosquitoes that are introduced into the environment to stop the spread of certain species of mosquitoes that carry infectious diseases such as malaria, zika, or yellow fever.

These mosquitoes are created by irradiating the males, using ionized radiation, which makes them sterile. These males are then released to mate with wild females, which would then lay sterile eggs that do not hatch, thus reducing the mosquito population.

Dr. Wu’s method is a bit more convoluted but its end results are the same.

As we have previously seen in this franchise, the science behind Jurassic World Dominion isn’t always as accurate as one can find in nature documentaries such as the recently released Prehistoric Planet. However, some of the concepts seen throughout this film are clearly based on the latest developments in the fields of paleontology and genetics, shining a light on issues that are currently being discussed in the scientific community.

To summarize, although ancient giant locusts the size of your typical house cat have yet to be discovered, swarms of locusts have been known to ravage entire continents, as recently as 2020, and genetic modification of animals and plants has become a common practice.

Unlike Lewis Dodgson, scientists are developing new technology to prevent these plagues from happening and to guarantee that our crop yields are enough to feed the whole World. Let’s just hope that a company as evil as Biosyn never leaves the fictional universe of Jurassic World Dominion.