Megachile rotundata Transcriptome or Gene expression

Megachile rotundata is a summer-flying, partially-bivoltine solitary bee. Megachile rotundata is used as a commercial pollinator for alfalfa seed production in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Canada and several European countries. Most of the progeny produced within a population enter diapause shortly they reach the prepupal stage. To better understand diapause termination in M. rotundata in order to predict termination date and post diapause development under field conditions, and to be able to manipulate the termination date to match the bees’ emergence with the peak bloom of target crops, we initiated a series of investigations examining molecular regulation of diapause.