Meeting Abstract
Life history trade-offs lead to various strategies that maximize fitness, but the developmental mechanisms underlying these alternative strategies continue to be poorly understood. In insects, trade-offs exist between size and developmental time. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, for instance will sacrifice a larger size for a faster life cycle. Contrastingly, the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, takes a longer time to reach its final adult stage in order to maximize their adult body size. Recent studies in Drosophila have suggested that the prothoracic gland plays a key role in determining the timing of metamorphosis. In this study, we compared the growth and gene expression of prothoracic glands in Drosophila and Manduca to begin to understand how the life history trade-offs might be diverge. Our findings suggest that differences in juvenile hormone production determines the nutrient-dependency of prothoracic gland activity and that the prothoracic glands is the focal gland that mediates differences in life history strategies.
