Food source affects the expression of vitellogenin and fecundity of a biological control agent, Neoseiulus cucumeris

• Published in: Experimental & applied acarology 2014-07, Vol.63 (3), p.333-347
• Main Authors: Zhao, Yunlong, Li, Dunsong, Zhang, Min, Chen, Wei, Zhang, Guren
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acari; Amino Acid Sequence; Animal Ecology; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Animal Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography; Animals; Base Sequence; Biological control; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cloning, Molecular; Computational Biology; Conserved Sequence; DNA, Complementary - chemistry; Entomology; Fecundity; Feeding Behavior; Female; Fertility; Food; Haemaphysalis longicornis; Life Sciences; Mites - physiology; Models, Molecular; Molecular Sequence Data; Parasitiformes; Pest Control, Biological; Phylogeny; Phytoseiidae; Sequence Alignment; Vitellogenins - chemistry; Vitellogenins - genetics; Vitellogenins - metabolism
• ISSN: 0168-8162; 1572-9702
• DOI: 10.1007/s10493-014-9781-3

Neoseiulus cucumeris (Oudemans) (Acari: Phytoseiidae) is one of the most widely used and important biological control agents for thrips and other small pests worldwide. In the present study, we cloned two cDNAs of vitellogenins ( Vg s, NcVg 1 and NcVg 2) and analyzed the effect of food source on the expression of both Vg s and fecundity in female adults. NcVg s showed higher sequence similarity to Vg s from Parasitiformes. Both neighbor-joining and maximum likelihood methods for phylogenetic analysis of NcVg s yielded similar topologies and showed that the Parasitiformes except Haemaphysalis longicornis segregated into a single clade that was separated into two subclades including one of both Vg s from N. cucum eris. Both transcripts, NcVg 1 and NcVg 2 revealed similar trends during developmental periods and reached the maximum level at the pre-oviposition period. When fed with different food sources, both NcVg 1 and NcVg 2 of female adults demonstrated a significant difference ( P