Abstract
This article is a comprehensive summary of the 50-year history of physiological investigations in the Czech Republic into the mode of action of the corpus allatum hormone (CAH) in insects, which is commonly known as the juvenile hormone (JH). During this period 4000 synthetic JH- mimetic bioanalogues were tested. The sesquiterpenoid epoxy-homofarnesoate (JH-I), which is generally thought to be the true JH of insects, is an excretory product of the male colleterial gland, not an insect hormone. There are two principal hormones produced by the insect neuroendocrine system: activation hormone (AH) produced by neurosecretory cells in the brain and JH secreted by the corpora allata. The prothoracic glands are a subordinated target of JH, not PTTH; they are not involved in the regulation of moulting in insects. The development of larval, pupal and adult structures depends primarily on inherited instructions encoded within the genome, not on high, medium or low concentrations of JH. At the level of epidermal cells, the responses to JH are always all-or-none with intermediate forms mosaic mixtures of cells of previous and future developmental stages.
Highlights
Insect endocrinology is a very competitive field of biological sciences
The definition of ecdysone as the moulting hormone produced by the PG became the leading concept in insect endocrinology for 50 years
Extirpations of neurosecretory cells (NSC) from the brain, and removal of c. allata (CA) and CC from Pyrrhocoris apterus were made in Ringer solution, using specimens immobilized by submersion in water (Sláma, 1964a, b)
Summary
Insect endocrinology is a very competitive field of biological sciences. The old hormonal theories, proposed some 50 years ago, are conservatively presented in textbooks on insect physiology (Nijhout, 1994; Nation, 2002; Klowden, 2007) and on the Internet, without mentioning new, alternative endocrinological data.
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