> Rocky Mountain Locust — Melanoplus spretus
# Description
A grasshopper whose swarms were among the largest insect aggregations recorded - Wikipedia 
Status: Extinct Region & Habitat: North American prairies; mass breeding on riverine sandbars and alpine valleys. Era of loss: Vanished by early 1900s after 19th-century swarms.
# Cinematic beat Heat shimmer over prairie; nymphs surge like a living tide—smash cut to a snow-fed river boxed by irrigation ditches; empty sky where the cloud once was.
# Habitat & Ecology - Breeding on ephemeral sandbars/floodplains; sensitive to ploughing, irrigation, and glacial valley development. - Migratory swarms forming from dense nymphal bands.
# Diet - Grasses and crops; opportunistic herbivore.
# Predators - Birds (blackbirds, gulls), parasitoids, disease during colony collapse.
# Behaviour - Phase polyphenism typical of locusts; swarm formation in dry, warm spells post-rain.
# Threats & Drivers - Destruction/irrigation of breeding grounds; river engineering; agriculture.
# Related - Extinct Insects – Recent Losses
