2024-07-04 シンガポール国立大学(NUS)
By conducting smell tests with the caterpillars of the squinting bush brown butterfly, Bicyclus anynana, NUS scientists demonstrated that caterpillars’ food preferences are determined by factors, or substances, present in their blood and these preferences could be passed on to offspring through the bloodstream. Credit: Associate Professor William Piel, Yale-NUS College
<関連情報>
- https://news.nus.edu.sg/how-caterpillars-pass-down-food-preferences-to-their-offspring/
- https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0595
血球輸血により、遺伝的に学習された新しい匂いの嗜好性がBicyclus anynanaチョウの未熟な幼虫に伝達される Haemolymph transfusions transfer heritable learned novel odour preferences to naive larvae of Bicyclus anynana butterflies
V. Gowri and Antonia Monteiro
Biology Letters Published:15 May 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0595
Abstract
The mechanisms whereby environmental experiences of parents are transmitted to their offspring to impact their behaviour and fitness are poorly understood. Previously, we showed that naive Bicyclus anynana butterfly larvae, whose parents fed on a normal plant feed but coated with a novel odour, inherited an acquired preference towards that odour, which had initially elicited avoidance in the naive parents. Here, we performed simple haemolymph transfusions from odour-fed and control-fed larvae to naive larval recipients. We found that larvae injected with haemolymph from odour-fed donors stopped avoiding the novel odour, and their naive offspring preferred the odour more, compared to the offspring of larvae injected with control haemolymph. These results indicate that factors in the haemolymph, potentially the odour molecule itself, play an important role in odour learning and preference transmission across generations. Furthermore, this mechanism of odour preference inheritance, mediated by the haemolymph, bypasses the peripheral odour-sensing mechanisms taking place in the antennae, mouthparts or legs, and may mediate food plant switching and diversification in Lepidoptera or more broadly across insects.
