Black Soldier Fly Larvae Adapt to Different Food Substrates through Morphological and Functional Responses of the Midgut.

ABSTRACT: Modulation of nutrient digestion and absorption is one of the post-ingestion mechanisms that guarantees the best exploitation of food resources, even when they are nutritionally poor or unbalanced, and plays a pivotal role in generalist feeders, which experience an extreme variability in diet composition. Among insects, the larvae of black soldier fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens, can grow on a wide range of feeding substrates with different nutrient content, suggesting that they can set in motion post-ingestion processes to match their nutritional requirements. In the present study we address this issue by investigating how the BSF larval midgut adapts to diets with different nutrient content. Two rearing substrates were compared: a nutritionally balanced diet for dipteran larvae and a

SUBMITTER: Bonelli M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7404193 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature