Transcriptome Analysis of Sexual Dimorphic Chinese White Wax Scale Reveals Key Differences in Developmental Programs and Transcription Factor Expression

We showed that, male E. pela, despite displaying complete metamorphosis similar to holometabolous insects, formed the sister group to hemimetabolous female E. pela and also clustered with Hemiptera. The gene expression profile and Gene Ontology (GO) analysis revealed that the two sexes engaged in distinct developmental programs. In particular, female development appeared to prioritize the expression of genes related to cellular, metabolic, developmental processes, and anatomical structure formation in nymphs. In contrast, male larval development is characterized by the significant down-regulation of genes involved in chitin, the respiratory system, and neurons. The results also suggest that pathways involved in fat metabolism and storage are differently used between the sexes. Overall design: Retinal mRNA profiles of male prepulae and male pupae generated by deep sequencing, no replicate, using Illumina