Locust Heaven: Locust outbreaks have severe consequences for agriculture, but the conditions that promote an outbreak are unknown. Cease et al. (p. 467 ) investigated aspects of the locust diet and found that increased nitrogen content of cereal grasses reduced the size and viability of a herbivorous locust species. This locust prefers low N plants, which result from heavy grazing by livestock and erosion.

Connections between locusts and people date back millennia and locusts remain a major food security challenge today throughout the world. Locust biology is often linked to abiotic conditions like temperature and/or precipitation, fueling the perception that aside from active control, humans are not a key player in the interaction locusts have with their environment. However, several studies have shown that land management practices like grazing heavily influences locust-human linkages. In this review we synthesize published research and reports on connections between locust outbreaks and ranching. For this, we conducted an extensive literature search using Google Scholar on the 19 species of grasshoppers that are currently considered to be locusts or non-model locusts. Species were sorted according to their feeding guilds: 1) forb- and/or tree-feeding locusts; 2) mix-feeding locusts (grasses, forbs, and/or trees); 3) grass-feeding locusts. We reviewed their pest status, ecology, and relationship with grazing. We then discussed the overall data and draw general patterns on how locusts and locust control affect livestock grazing through various mechanisms (competition, nutritional preferences, pesticide use, nutrient cycling). We draw attention to “telecoupling” a process in which land management practices like grazing have ecological feedbacks on locust populations, which in turn affects food security in distant regions due to the migratory capacity of locusts. Finally, we present new perspectives for sustainable management practices that integrate understanding of land management.

Insect tracheal-respiratory systems achieve high fluxes and great dynamic range with low energy requirements and could be important models for bioengineers interested in developing microfluidic systems. Recent advances suggest that insect cardiorespiratory systems have functional valves that permit compartmentalization with segment-specific pressures and flows and that system anatomy allows regional flows. Convection dominates over diffusion as a transport mechanism in the major tracheae, but Reynolds numbers suggest viscous effects remain important.

Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) are systems of feedback linking people and ecosystems. A feature of CHANS is that this ecological feedback connects people across time and space. Failing to account for these dynamic links results in intertemporal and spatial externalities, reaping benefits in the present but imposing costs on future and distant people, such as occurs with overgrazing. Recent findings about locust–nutrient dynamics create new opportunities to address spatiodynamic ecosystem externalities and develop new sustainable strategies to understand and manage locust outbreaks. These findings in northeast China demonstrate that excessive livestock grazing promotes locust outbreaks in an unexpected way: by lowering plant nitrogen content due to soil degradation. We use these human–locust–livestock–nutrient interactions in grasslands to illustrate CHANS concepts. Such empirical discoveries provide opportunities to address externalities such as locust outbreaks, but society's ability to act may be limited by preexisting institutional arrangements.