LOCUSTRIX

Locustrix gallegoi

Etymology: Gallego's she-locust

Nickname: "Hexapod Allies"

Classification: Insecta, Locustopsidae

Diet: Herbivore

Size: 3 to 5 centimeters long (counting the wings)

Provenance: Crato Formation, Brazil - Early Cretaceous, Aptian stage, 115 - 113.2 million years ago

Movie appearances: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Locustrix gallegoi is a locustopsid insect from the Early Cretaceous period that was resurrected, with some of its genetics slightly altered with the genes of the modern desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria). These insects were not engineered to feed on Biosyn genetically engineered crops, which caused them to swarm and consume other plants, casuing an eccological crisis.

Locustrix are voracious insects that eat large amounts of vegetation, especially when in large swarms, being capable of devastating large fields of agricultural crops.

Locustrix was resurrected by Biosyn, being genetically modified to serve as the components of the secret program "Hexapod Allies". They were initially designed to spread genetic modifications to crops in order to make them resistant to drougths, frosts and disease outbreaks. However, their rampant growth turned them into a dangerous plague across various plantations in the US and other parts of the globe. Among the general populace, the expanse of the Locustrix was very unpopular, with some people even thinking these insects were meat eaters and worth running away from. Swarms of Locustrix were proven to be so numerous that, in some occasions, plenty of them banging against glass windows could lead them to break. Locustrix were reported being consumed by some de-extinct dinosaurs, like Ceratosaurus. Later in 2022, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler infiltrate the Biosyn labs to get a sample of Locustrix to prove Biosyn's involvement in this biohazard, but they fail to do so after the swarm of insects is triggered by an alarm and starts flying around uncontrollably in the lab. Later, the Locustrix are sent to be exterminated, with fire being sprayed to the lab to get rid of them, but surprisingly many of the Locustrix could survive, for a short period of time, being slightly burned, and as a few escapes, they inadvertently caused a wildfire in the Biosyn Sanctuary; after this event. Dr. Wu creates a strain of Locustrix with a pathogen that would help erradicate the invasive swarms of insects.

FILM vs. REALITY

DISCLAIMER: Locustrix does not show up in the Jurassic Park films, and it is instead, here, meant to be a plausible substitute to the films' giant locust. In opposition to what we know from real life, no locust fossils are known from the Cretaceous period, in fact molecular clock dating puts the origins of Acrididae (the family including modern locusts) as originating in the Paleocene, shortly after the end of the Cretaceous period. Locust-like insects, from the orthopteran lineage, did exist during the Mesozoic era, however, namely members of the Locustopsidae family, which Locustrix belongs to. Very few species of orthopterans are known from the Mesozoic era, let alone the Cretaceous, due to very few fossil formations having the capacity of preserving detailed and diagnosable fossils of these delicate insects. The giant locust is shown coexisting with animals like Quetzalcoatlus, in the Jurassic World: Dominion prologue, but unfortunetly no orthopteran genus and species is known to have coexisted with it. The best approximation to the information given in the movies is that the giant locust derives from a Cretaceous extinct species, so Locustrix, which is known from the early Cretaceous of South America, is chosen as a viable replacement.

The size of the giant locusts in the films is unmatched by that of many other insects. Among the orthopteran lineage, the absolute largest extinct members known are the Triassic titanopterans, which may approach the giant locust in size, but anatomical evidence supports the idea that titanopterans were carnivores, and not herbivores. Eccological proxies to locusts at the time, such as Locustrix, were only a few centimeters long. Most of the films' depictions of the giant locusts, apart from dramatic effect, are independent of the animal's large size, so replacing it with a more modestly sized, but functionally similar, plague-causing herbivorous insect works enough. Although it would be nigh impossible for an individual Locustrix to survive flames, it has been historically demonstrated that ellminating swarms of locusts with fire is inefficient, as the swarms can be very extensive, making elliminating them with fire statistically very hard, the wingbeat of several insects smothers the expanse of the fire and smoke, and risks causing forest fires as the insects spread through the land half-burned, consequences that can surprisingly be accurately portrayed on screen.