Insects are unable to synthesize essential amino acids (EAAs) de novo, thus rely on dietary or symbiotic sources for them. Wood is a poor resource of nitrogen in general, and EAAs in particular. In this study, we investigated whether gut microbiota of the Asian longhorned beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky), a cerambycid that feeds in the heartwood of healthy host trees, serve as sou...

Here, we show that the consequences of deficient micronutrient (beta-carotene) intake during larval stages of Manduca sexta are carried across metamorphosis, affecting adult behaviour. Our manipulation of larval diet allowed us to examine how developmental plasticity impacts the interplay between visual and olfactory inputs on adult foraging behaviour. Larvae of M. sexta were reared on natural ...

Silkworm has been proposed recently as an animal model for the study of therapeutic effects of drug candidates. Little is known regarding the factors influencing the physiology of the silkworm, and this might become the major effect of the therapeutic result interpretation. In the present study, the effect of a diet of mulberry leaves as compared to an artificial diet on Thai silkworm growth de...

America's obesity epidemic has gathered much media attention recently. A rise in the percent of the population who are obese coincides with an increase in the widespread use of non-caloric artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame (e.g., Diet Coke) and sucralose (e.g., Pepsi One), in food products (Figure 1). Both forward and reverse causalities have been proposed. While people often choose "die...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to determine the effect of artificial sweeteners on glucose, insulin, and glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 in humans. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS For this study, 22 healthy volunteers (mean age 18.5 +/- 4.2 years) underwent two 75-g oral glucose tolerance tests with frequent measurements of glucose, insulin, and GLP-1 for 180 min. Subjects drank 240 ml of die...

Three genes encoding polygalacturonase (PG) have been identified in Lygus lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois) (Miridae: Hemiptera). Earlier studies showed that the three PG gene transcripts are exclusively expressed in the feeding stages of L. lineolaris. In this report, it is shown that all three transcripts are specifically expressed in salivary glands indicating that PGs are salivary enzymes. T...

The morphology and histology of the reproductive tract of males of the predator Podisus nigrispinus (Dallas) fed on different diets were studied. P. nigrispinus was fed on diets of: larvae of Alabama argillacea (Hübner), Tenebrio molitor L., Musca domestica L., and an artificial diet. The male reproductive tract, independent of diet, showed testes with intense red coloration in a compact, circu...

Artificial aphid diets have been previously developed for the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris), and the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae (Sulzer). The ability to rear aphids on an artificial diet allows for selectively adding or subtracting compounds from an aphid's food source to determine the effect on fecundity and longevity. Five diets previously developed for the green peach aphid ...

Colorado potato beetles have been reared successfully through 12 generations on artificial diets containing either 2.5% potato leaf powder or 2.5% lettuce leaf powder/0.75% potato leaf powder. For all but one of the treatment groups, the mean duration of each of the four larval stages was between 0.8 and 1.5 days longer than the durations exhibited by control beetles that had been fed on potato...

Abstract The quinoa pest Copitarsia incommoda (Walker, Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a cause of significant damage, and it thus critical for Andean countries to have access phenological models maintain production food safety. These are key components in control strategies the context global warming development sustainable integrating agroecological concepts. Phenological mainly based on outlining ...