Determining the effects of nutrition on the reproductive physiology of male mosquitoes

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved..

Nutrition affects multiple aspects of insect physiology such as body size and fecundity, but we lack a detailed understanding of how nutrition influences the reproductive physiology of male insects such as mosquitoes. Given that female mosquitoes are vectors of many deadly diseases and can quickly proliferate, understanding how male nutrition impacts female fecundity could be of critical importance. To uncover the relationship between nutrition in adult male mosquitoes and its impacts on reproductive physiology, we reared larvae of the Northern house mosquito, Culex pipiens, on a standard lab diet and divided adult males among three different dietary treatments: low (3%), moderate (10%), and high (20%) sucrose. We found that although overall body size did not differ among treatments, one-week-old males raised on the 3% sucrose diet had significantly smaller male accessory glands (MAGs) compared to males that consumed the 10% and the 20% sucrose diets. Diet affected whole-body lipid content but did not affect whole-body protein content. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, we found that diet altered the metabolic composition of the MAGs, including changes in lactic acid, formic acid, and glucose. We also observed changes in protein and lipid abundance and composition in MAGs. Females who mated with males on the 3% diet were found to produce significantly fewer larvae than females who had mated with males on the 10% diet. Taken together, our results demonstrate that the diet of adult male mosquitoes clearly affects male reproductive physiology and female fecundity.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2021

Erschienen:

2021

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:129

Enthalten in:

Journal of insect physiology - 129(2021) vom: 01. Feb., Seite 104191

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Huck, Derek T [VerfasserIn]
Klein, Matthias S [VerfasserIn]
Meuti, Megan E [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Fecundity
Insect Proteins
Journal Article
Lipid content
Male accessory glands
Metabolomics
NMR spectroscopy
Protein content
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 20.09.2021

Date Revised 20.09.2021

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.jinsphys.2021.104191

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM319923614