Male crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) exhibit intensively defensive aggressive behavior towards attacking males most often culminating in fighting. After the fight, the loser no longer exhibits aggressiveness in a second, separate encounter with another male; rather, the defeated male exhibits avoidance behavior. Here, we investigated the role of sensory input from the antennae in male defensive ...

How do animals discriminate self-generated from external stimuli during behavior and prevent desensitization of their sensory pathways? A fundamental concept in neuroscience states that neural signals, termed corollary discharges or efference copies, are forwarded from motor to sensory areas. Neurons mediating these signals have proved difficult to identify. We show that a single, multisegmenta...

To understand the mechanism of regeneration, many experiments have been carried out with hemimetabolous insects, since their nymphs possess the ability to regenerate amputated legs. We first succeeded in observing expression patterns of hedgehog, wingless (wg), and decapentaplegic (dpp) during leg regeneration of the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. The observed expression patterns were essentially...

Microsporidia Paranosema locustae and Paranosema grylli infect fat bodies of orthopteran hosts Locusta migratoria and Gryllus bimaculatus, respectively, and cause formation of nodules consisting of deposits of melanin around heavily infected cells. Both species sporadically produce enlarged or malformed (teratoid) spores as a result of abnormal sporogony. Proportions of teratospores within mela...

A model depicting 2 horizontally positioned black spots resembling facing eyes, as compared with models depicting other spot arrangements, elicits intense flight activity in young African jewel fish (Hemichromis bimaculatus) under 5 months of age and 7-month-old subadults reared apart from conspecifics with eyeless cave fish (Anoptichthys jordani). In contrast, subadults permitted to observe or...

Three new species of Coccobius Ratzeburg (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae) are described from China, Coccobius bimaculatus Wang, Huang & Polaszek sp. nov., Coccobius jinshanensis Wang, Huang & Polaszek sp. nov. and Coccobius leptocerus Wang, Huang & Polaszek sp. nov. Coccobius abdominis Huang 1994 and Coccobius furviflagellatus Huang 1994, originally described in Chinese, are redescribed in English an...

We report the isolation and expression patterns of aristaless (al), a paired-type homeobox gene, of Gryllus bimaculatus (Gb), a hemimetabola model insect. Gryllus al (Gbal) is expressed in the most distal region of developing labrum, antenna, mandible, maxilla, labium, leg, cercus, and hindgut. Gbal is also expressed in the proximal region, corresponding to the presumptive coxopodite, of the de...