No water, no mating: Connecting dots from behaviour to pathways

Insects hold considerable ecological and agricultural importance making it vital to understand the factors impacting their reproductive output. Environmental stressors are examples of such factors which have a substantial and significant influence on insect reproductive fitness. Insects are also ectothermic and small in size which makes them even more susceptible to environmental stresses. The present study assesses the consequence of desiccation on the mating latency and copulations duration in tropical Drosophila melanogaster. We tested flies for these reproductive behavioral parameters at varying body water levels and with whole metabolome analysis in order to gain a further understanding of the physiological response to desiccation. Our results showed that the duration of desiccation is positively correlated with mating latency and mating failure, while having no influence on the copulation duration. The metabolomic analysis revealed three biological pathways highly affected by desi...

昆虫在生态学与农业领域均具有举足轻重的研究与应用价值，因此解析影响其繁殖产出的相关因素至关重要。环境胁迫因子（environmental stressors）便是此类关键影响因素之一，其对昆虫的繁殖适合度（reproductive fitness）具有显著且深远的调控作用。昆虫兼具外温性（ectothermic）与体型微小的生物学特征，这使其对环境胁迫的易感性进一步提升。本研究以热带黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）为实验材料，评估了干燥胁迫（desiccation）对其交配潜伏期（mating latency）与交配时长（copulation duration）的影响。为深入阐明昆虫对干燥胁迫的生理响应机制，本研究通过设置不同体内水分水平的果蝇样本，检测上述繁殖行为参数，并结合全代谢组分析（whole metabolome analysis）开展相关研究。研究结果表明，干燥胁迫时长与交配潜伏期及交配失败率呈显著正相关，而对交配时长无显著影响。代谢组分析结果显示，共有三条生物通路（biological pathways）受到干燥胁迫的显著影响，原文此处未完成