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Histopathological effects of Bacillus thuringiensis on the midgut of the Mediterranean locust Dociostaurus maroccanus.

The Mediterranean or Moroccan locust, Dociostaurus maroccanus (Thunberg), poses a continual threat to agriculture and habitats for livestock in Spain and other Mediterranean countries. This species must be controlled to prevent the growth of high-density migratory gregarious populations that develop in well-defined outbreak areas (Latchininsky and LaunoisLuong, 1992). Since 1990, our group has been surveying natural populations of D. maroccanus in an effort to find indigenous biological control agents that might replace chemical insecticides, which are used in large quantities to prevent outbreaks of this pest. The most common biological agents regulating D. maroccanus populations in the locust breeding area of La Serena (Badajoz, Spain) were the mermithid Hexamermis serenensis (Hernández-Crespo and Santiago-Alvarez, 1997a), the fungus Beauveria bassiana (HernándezCrespo and Santiago-Alvarez, 1997b), and many strains of Bacillus thuringiensis isolated from nymphs (Aldebis et al., 1994). The advantageous properties of B. thuringiensis that meet the rigorous requirements for a microbial control agent for locusts include its ease of production, storability under adverse conditions, fast mode of action, and effectiveness in arid areas at high temperatures. The search for isolates of B. thuringiensis active against orthopterans has and is being pursued by a number of research institutes and commercial companies, but the results of these large-scale screenings have typically remained unpublished. In a previous attempt to control the Mediterranean locust by means of B. thuringiensis, Safarova in 1984 obtained 30–40% mortality in field trials against nymphs in the former