Overview: In a world of worthy candidates, there are several compelling reasons to sequence the genome of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum. First and foremost, Tribolium is one of the most sophisticated genetic model organisms among all higher eukaryotes. Among arthropods, only Drosophila offers greater power and flexibility of genetic manipulation. Second, the Tribolium genome sequence...

Context: The essential oils are being tried as potential candidates for pest and disease management. Several essential oils of botanical origin have been reported for their repellant, toxic and developmental inhibitory activities. The ovicidal effect of essential oil is probably the major factor in the suppression of the development of adults from treated eggs. Objectives: To investigate the ov...

Interactions between stored product pest insects and their parasitoids are well known to be mediated by infochemicals. However, little knowledge is available about the extent which parasitoid responses host kairomones improve search parasitization success. Here, we tested whether release of host-specific confused flour beetle, Tribolium confusum , improves finding larval ectoparasitoid Holepyri...

N the course of linkage studies involving several new mutations affecting eye I pigmentation in the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, it became apparent that while being nonallelic to each other and to previously reported eye mutants they were not randomly distributed in the genome. In fact, of the nine eye mutant loci thus far reported, six occur as colsely linked members of three gene pairs....

This paper presents evidence for the occurrence of proteinaceous inhibitors isolated from Chick pea (Cicer arietinum), Kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), Maize seeds (Zea mays), Wheat (Triticum aestivum) and Millet (Pennisetum typhoides). These seeds inhibitors exhibited inhibitory activity against alpha amylase from red flour beetle, T. castaneum. Out of five tested seed samples Wheat, Maize an...

A difference equation model based in biological mechanisms is presented describing the laboratory population dynamics of the flour beetle Tribolium freemani. This is the first time a model for this insect species is presented. The model was fitted to laboratory data and evaluated. The results suggest that the model’s predictive ability is good and that the biological mechanisms taken under cons...

The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, offers a repertoire of experimental tools for genetic and developmental studies, including a fully annotated genome sequence, transposon-based transgenesis, and effective RNA interference (RNAi). Among these advantages, RNAi-based gene knockdown techniques are at the core of Tribolium research. T. castaneum show a robust systemic RNAi response, making ...