[ChillPill (OP)]

Hi guys,

I’m gonna start a new project that involves breeding locusts and I had an idea.

Locusts/grasshoppers, like other animals, may suffer from a congenital condition called Erythrism, basically an abnormal redness in the animal. The locusts with this rare condition are bright pink, and are beautiful; unfortunately they are not able to survive in nature because of the poor mimicry this color offer.

So I began to think: Can I create what can’t exist in nature? Would it be possible to breed a pink locust and from it selective breed an entire pink swarm?

What do you think?

[Colin2B]

If the lack of survivability is only down to visibility, then if kept in an environment with no predators then they should survive.

Pink is the new green?

[evan_au]

Try hiding them in a flock of pink flamingoes....

[Colin2B]

Try hiding them in a flock of pink flamingoes....

They should be safe, flamingoes eat algae, tiny shrimp and diatoms.  No locusts.

[Bored chemist]

The point of being part of a swarm is that there are not enough predators to eat all of you.
So, it doesn't matter much if you are pink.

[wolfekeeper]

Well, yeah, the simplest plan is you just get some pink locusts, as many as possible, and breed them, and kill or release all the ones that aren't pink. Pretty soon you could end up with a breed of locusts that are only pink. ?? Profit?

There might be some problems though, like do they breed true? etc. Genetics is rarely simple Mendelian, there can be multiple genes involved in any particular trait and you may find none of the second generation possess the trait because they need all the genes together and they probably won't get it.

[ChillPill (OP)]

Well, yeah, the simplest plan is you just get some pink locusts, as many as possible, and breed them, and kill or release all the ones that aren't pink. Pretty soon you could end up with a breed of locusts that are only pink. ?? Profit?

The only problem is that they are too rare in nature and are almost impossible to find

[Bored chemist]

Well, yeah, the simplest plan is you just get some pink locusts, as many as possible, and breed them, and kill or release all the ones that aren't pink. Pretty soon you could end up with a breed of locusts that are only pink. ?? Profit?

The only problem is that they are too rare in nature and are almost impossible to find

You only need to find 1 or 2 if you are lucky.
Failing that, you are in the realms of genetic engineering.

[syhprum]

Try hunting around Chernobyl or some other site where the revel of radioactivity is enhanced  the mutation rate may be higher.

[wolfekeeper]

You probably don't need to go to Chernobyl:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding

But it's a long shot.

Until you can get one or, at the very least a DNA sequence of one, you're screwed.

Wikipedia says it's a dominant trait, so it might be as simple as simply growing a whole bunch of them under predator-free conditions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrism