The turnip sawfly, Athalia rosae Linnaeus, is a pest on cruciferous crops. Larvae sequester secondary plant compounds, namely glucosinolates, in their haemolymph. When attacked, their integument is easily disrupted and a droplet of haemolymph is exuded ('easy bleeding'). This has been shown to be an effective, chemical-based, defence against invertebrate predators. The efficiency of this propos...

Insect wings are great resources for studying morphological diversities in nature as well as in fossil records. Among them, variation in wing venation is one of the most characteristic features of insect species. Venation is therefore, undeniably a key factor of species-specific functional traits of the wings; however, the mechanism underlying wing vein formation among insects largely remains u...

mechanisms of wing vein formation have been well studied in Drosophila melanogaster, however little is known about if the mechanisms are conserved to develop diversified wing vein patterns among insects. In Drosophila, Dpp, BMP2/4 ortholog, is initially expressed at longitudinal veins and later at crossveins to specify both veins during pupal stages. Using a GFP tagged Dpp, we first addressed h...

The cDNA of Apis mellifera vitellogenin was cloned and sequenced. It is 5440 bp long and contains an ORF of 1770 amino acids (including a putative signal peptide of 16 residues). The deduced amino acid sequence shows significant similarity with other hymenopteran vitellogenins (58% with Pimpla nipponica and 54% with Athalia rosae). The alignment with 19 insect vitellogenins shows a high number ...