Meeting Abstract
Scale insects, a hemipteran plant pest group, are well defined by the females retaining juvenile features at the adult stage and different degrees of morphological reductions due to their parasitic life on plants. Although female neoteny is recognized as a feature that originated once in scale insect evolution, its underlying molecular mechanisms have never been investigated. We here assessed whether the transcription factor E93, a conserved adult specifier in insects and regulated by growth hormones, has a role in this female neoteny. We established the expression profile of E93 during male and female development in the Japanese mealybug, Planococcus kraunhiae (Kuwana) (Pseudococcidae). Strikingly, while E93 expression peaks towards the end of male development, this transcription factor is never expressed throughout female development. These preliminary results and the potential involvement of E93 in juvenile hormone signaling provides a promising direction towards understanding how this transcription factor in concert with the juvenile hormone can establish such a conserved feature for parasitic life.
