Host quality induces phenotypic plasticity in a wing polyphenic insect.

ABSTRACT: Food quality is a critical environmental condition that impacts an animal's growth and development. Many insects facing this challenge have evolved a phenotypically plastic, adaptive response. For example, many species of insect exhibit facultative wing growth, which reflects a physiological and evolutionary trade-off between dispersal and reproduction, triggered by environmental conditions. What the environmental cues are and how they are transduced to produce these alternative forms, and their associated ecological shift from dispersal to reproduction, remains an important unsolved problem in evolutionary ecology. In this study, we investigated the role that host quality has on the induction of wing development in a wing polyphenic insect exhibiting strong tradeoffs in investment between

SUBMITTER: Lin X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6055199 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature