scholarly journals Stink Bug Communication and Signal Detection in a Plant Environment

Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1058
Author(s):  
Andrej Čokl ◽  
Alenka Žunič-Kosi ◽  
Nataša Stritih-Peljhan ◽  
Maria Carolina Blassioli-Moraes ◽  
Raúl Alberto Laumann ◽  
...  

Plants influenced the evolution of plant-dwelling stink bugs’ systems underlying communication with chemical and substrate-borne vibratory signals. Plant volatiles provides cues that increase attractiveness or interfere with the probability of finding a mate in the field. Mechanical properties of herbaceous hosts and associated plants alter the frequency, amplitude, and temporal characteristics of stink bug species and sex-specific vibratory signals. The specificity of pheromone odor tuning has evolved through highly specific odorant receptors located within the receptor membrane. The narrow-band low-frequency characteristics of the signals produced by abdomen vibration and the frequency tuning of the highly sensitive subgenual organ vibration receptors match with filtering properties of the plants enabling optimized communication. A range of less sensitive mechanoreceptors, tuned to lower vibration frequencies, detect signals produced by other mechanisms used at less species-specific levels of communication in a plant environment. Whereas the encoding of frequency-intensity and temporal parameters of stink bug vibratory signals is relatively well investigated at low levels of processing in the ventral nerve cord, processing of this information and its integration with other modalities at higher neuronal levels still needs research attention.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Denecke ◽  
Panagiotis Ioannidis ◽  
Benjamin Buer ◽  
Aris Ilias ◽  
Vassilis Douris ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Stink bugs are an emerging threat to crop security in many parts of the globe, but there are few genetic resources available to study their physiology at a molecular level. This is especially true for tissues such as the midgut, which forms the barrier between ingested material and the inside of the body. Results Here, we focus on the midgut of the southern green stink bug Nezara viridula and use both transcriptomic and proteomic approaches to create an atlas of expression along the four compartments of the anterior-posterior axis. Estimates of the transcriptome completeness were high, which led us to compare our predicted gene set to other related stink bugs and Hemiptera, finding a high number of species-specific genes in N. viridula. To understand midgut function, gene ontology and gene family enrichment analyses were performed for the most highly expressed and specific genes in each midgut compartment. These data suggested a role for the anterior midgut (regions M1-M3) in digestion and xenobiotic metabolism, while the most posterior compartment (M4) was enriched in transmembrane proteins. A more detailed characterization of these findings was undertaken by identifying individual members of the cytochrome P450 superfamily and nutrient transporters thought to absorb amino acids or sugars. Conclusions These findings represent an initial step to understand the compartmentalization and physiology of the N. viridula midgut at a genetic level. Future studies will be able to build on this work and explore the molecular physiology of the stink bug midgut.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 407-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrej Čokl ◽  
Alenka Žunič-Kosi ◽  
Raul Alberto Laumann

This review represents complex mechanisms and processes of multimodal communication in stink bugs. During reproductive behavior the airborne and substrate-borne signals enable mate recognition, mediate directionality of movement, eliminate rivals and motivate partners for copulation. Species specific characteristics prevent hybridization at various levels of mating behavior. Male sex and/or aggregation pheromones as uni- or multicomponent signals attract mates to land on the same plant and there, trigger females to call males by vibratory signals, transmitted through the plant. Communication during courtship runs at short distance with visual, airborne, substrate-borne and contact chemical and mechanical signals. Abdomen vibrations produce the main repertoire of female and male calling, courtship and rival vibratory signals. To increase their informational value, stink bugs tune signal frequency, amplitude and temporal characteristics with mechanical properties of plants. The airborne component of species non-specific and high amplitude signals, produced by body tremulation and wing buzzing enables communication contact between mates standing on mechanically isolated plants. Female vibratory signals increase the amount of male emitted pheromone and the latter keeps female calling. Interaction, synergy and characteristics of visual, contact chemical and vibratory signals, exchanged during courtship remain under-investigated. Female and male competition for access to copulation in imbalanced sex conditions is characterized by duetting with rival song vibratory signals. Different receptors in and on different parts of the body are able to detect with high sensitivity multimodal airborne and substrate-borne communication signals. The relevance of the multimodal communication for the reproductive success of stink bugs is discussed.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Denecke ◽  
Panagiotis Ioannidis ◽  
Benjamin Buer ◽  
Aris Ilias ◽  
Vassilis Douris ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Stink bugs are an emerging threat to crop security in many parts of the globe, but there are few genetic resources available to study their physiology at a molecular level. This is especially true for tissues such as the midgut, which forms the barrier between ingested material and the inside of the body. Results Here, we focus on the midgut of the southern green stink bug Nezara viridula and use both transcriptomic and proteomic approaches to create an atlas of expression along the four compartments of the anterior-posterior axis. Estimates of the transcriptome completeness were high, which led us to compare our predicted gene set to other related stink bugs and Hemiptera, finding a high number of species-specific genes in N. viridula. To understand midgut function, gene ontology and gene family enrichment analyses were performed for the most highly expressed and specific genes in each midgut compartment. These data suggested a role for the anterior midgut (regions M1-M3) in digestion and xenobiotic metabolism, while the most posterior compartment (M4) was enriched in transmembrane proteins. A more detailed characterization of these findings was undertaken by identifying individual members of the cytochrome P450 superfamily and nutrient transporters thought to absorb amino acids or sugars. Conclusions These findings represent an initial step to understand the compartmentalization and physiology of the N. viridula midgut at a genetic level. Future studies will be able to build on this work and explore the molecular physiology of the stink bug midgut.


Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 467
Author(s):  
Maple N. Chen ◽  
Ricardo D. Santander ◽  
Elijah J. Talamas ◽  
Peter J. Jentsch ◽  
Marie-Claude Bon ◽  
...  

The samurai wasp, Trissolcus japonicus (Ashmead), has been proposed as a biocontrol agent against brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB), due to its ability to parasitize and kill BMSB eggs. However, the wasps’ small size makes it challenging for those untrained in morphological identification to determine the wasps’ species. To circumvent this problem, a molecular method was created to identify T. japonicus. The method uses species-specific primers, designed in this study, which target the variable region of the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase 1 (CO1) locus. After confirming successful DNA extraction from samples, the PCR amplification using our primers produced 227-bp PCR products for all T. japonicus specimens and no amplification in other microhymenoptera candidates. Additionally, DNA from BMSB-parasitized eggs gave positive PCR amplification, while the control BMSB samples showed no amplification. This indicates that PCR with our primers specifically and sensitively differentiates T. japonicus specimens from other similar wasp species and discriminates between T. japonicus-parasitized and non-parasitized BMSB eggs. Finally, an in silico analysis of CO1 sequences demonstrated that our primers match the sequences of four different haplotypes of T. japonicus, indicating that our diagnostic method could potentially be applied to analyze T. japonicus populations throughout North America, Europe, and parts of Asia.


Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Aline Moreira Dias ◽  
Miguel Borges ◽  
Maria Carolina Blassioli Moraes ◽  
Matheus Lorran Figueira Coelho ◽  
Andrej Čokl ◽  
...  

Stink bugs are major pests in diverse crops around the world. Pest management strategies based on insect behavioral manipulation could help to develop biorational management strategies of stink bugs. Insect mating disruption using vibratory signals is an approach with high potential for pest management. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of conspecific female rival signals on the mating behavior and copulation of three stink bug species to establish their potential for mating disruption. Previously recorded female rival signals were played back to bean plants where pairs of the Neotropical brown stink bug, Euschistus heros, and two green stink bugs, Chinavia ubica and Chinavia impicticornis were placed. Vibratory communication and mating behavior were recorded for each pair throughout the experimental time (20 min). Female rival signals show a disrupting effect on the reproductive behavior of three conspecific investigated stink bug species. This effect was more clearly expressed in E. heros and C. ubica than in C. impicticornis. The likelihood of copulating in pairs placed on control plants, without rival signals, increased 29.41 times in E. heros, 4.6 times in C. ubica and 1.71 times in C. impicticornis. However, in the last case, the effect of female rivalry signals in copulation was not significant. The effect of mating disruption of female rival signals of the three stink bug species may originate from the observed reduction in specific vibratory communication signals emitted, which influences the duet formation and further development of different phases of mating behavior. Our results suggest that female rival signals have potential for application in manipulation and disruption of mating behavior of stink bugs. Further work needs to focus on the effects of female rival signals used in long duration experiments and also their interactions with chemical communication of stink bugs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104063872110214
Author(s):  
Deepanker Tewari ◽  
David Steward ◽  
Melinda Fasnacht ◽  
Julia Livengood

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion-mediated, transmissible disease of cervids, including deer ( Odocoileus spp.), which is characterized by spongiform encephalopathy and death of the prion-infected animals. Official surveillance in the United States using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and ELISA entails the laborious collection of lymphoid and/or brainstem tissue after death. New, highly sensitive prion detection methods, such as real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC), have shown promise in detecting abnormal prions from both antemortem and postmortem specimens. We compared RT-QuIC with ELISA and IHC for CWD detection utilizing deer retropharyngeal lymph node (RLN) tissues in a diagnostic laboratory setting. The RLNs were collected postmortem from hunter-harvested animals. RT-QuIC showed 100% sensitivity and specificity for 50 deer RLN (35 positive by both IHC and ELISA, 15 negative) included in our study. All deer were also genotyped for PRNP polymorphism. Most deer were homozygous at codons 95, 96, 116, and 226 (QQ/GG/AA/QQ genotype, with frequency 0.86), which are the codons implicated in disease susceptibility. Heterozygosity was noticed in Pennsylvania deer, albeit at a very low frequency, for codons 95GS (0.06) and 96QH (0.08), but deer with these genotypes were still found to be CWD prion-infected.


2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1864) ◽  
pp. 20171670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly C. Womack ◽  
Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard ◽  
Luis A. Coloma ◽  
Juan C. Chaparro ◽  
Kim L. Hoke

Sensory losses or reductions are frequently attributed to relaxed selection. However, anuran species have lost tympanic middle ears many times, despite anurans' use of acoustic communication and the benefit of middle ears for hearing airborne sound. Here we determine whether pre-existing alternative sensory pathways enable anurans lacking tympanic middle ears (termed earless anurans) to hear airborne sound as well as eared species or to better sense vibrations in the environment. We used auditory brainstem recordings to compare hearing and vibrational sensitivity among 10 species (six eared, four earless) within the Neotropical true toad family (Bufonidae). We found that species lacking middle ears are less sensitive to high-frequency sounds, however, low-frequency hearing and vibrational sensitivity are equivalent between eared and earless species. Furthermore, extratympanic hearing sensitivity varies among earless species, highlighting potential species differences in extratympanic hearing mechanisms. We argue that ancestral bufonids may have sufficient extratympanic hearing and vibrational sensitivity such that earless lineages tolerated the loss of high frequency hearing sensitivity by adopting species-specific behavioural strategies to detect conspecifics, predators and prey.


2013 ◽  
Vol 137 (11) ◽  
pp. 1560-1568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Zhou ◽  
Diana Bell ◽  
L. Jeffrey Medeiros

Context.—Myeloid sarcoma of the head and neck region can pose diagnostic challenges because of the low frequency of myeloid sarcoma and the potential for tumors of almost any lineage to occur in the head and neck. Objective.—To study the clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical characteristics of myeloid sarcoma in the head and neck region and to review the differential diagnosis. Design.—We searched for cases of myeloid sarcoma involving the head and neck region for a 24-year period at our institution. The medical records and pathology slides were reviewed. Additional immunohistochemical stains were performed. Results.—We identified 17 patients, age 17 to 85 years. Most tumors involved the oral cavity. Myeloid sarcoma was the initial diagnosis in 9 patients (53%); the remaining 8 patients (47%) had a history of bone marrow disease. Immunohistochemical analysis using antibodies specific for lysozyme, CD43, and CD68 were highly sensitive for diagnosis but were not specific. By contrast, assessment for myeloperoxidase in this study was less sensitive but more specific. We also used antibodies specific for CD11c and CD33 in a subset of cases, and these reagents seem helpful as well. Conclusions.—The clinical presentation of myeloid sarcoma involving the head and neck, particularly the mouth, is often nonspecific, and a high degree of suspicion for the possibility of myeloid sarcoma is needed. Immunohistochemistry is very helpful for establishing the diagnosis.


Stink Bugs ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 226-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Alberto Laumann ◽  
Douglas Henrique Bottura Maccagnan ◽  
Andrej Coki

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