Abstract
The cuticle of all insects is covered with hydrocarbons which have multiple functions. Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) basically serve to protect insects against environmental harm and reduce dehydration. In many species, some CHCs also act as pheromones. CHCs have been intensively studied in Drosophila species and more especially in D. melanogaster. In this species, flies produce about 40 CHCs forming a complex sex- and species-specific bouquet. The quantitative and qualitative pattern of the CHC bouquet was characterized during the first days of adult life but remains unexplored in aging flies. Here, we characterized CHCs during the whole-or a large period of-adult life in males and females of several wild type and transgenic lines. Both types of lines included standard and variant CHC profiles. Some of the genotypes tested here showed very dramatic and unexpected aging-related variation based on their early days' profile. This study provides a concrete dataset to better understand the mechanisms underlying the establishment and maintenance of CHCs on the fly cuticle. It could be useful to determine physiological parameters, including age and response to climate variation, in insects collected in the wild.
Highlights
While physiological changes in aging animals were already described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (Woodcox 2018), in the 1930's researchers started to precisely measure quantitative changes occurring during aging (Crimm and Short 1934; Horst et al 1934; McCay et al 1939)
The model insect species Drosophila melanogaster became very popular in such research since it is amenable for the genetic dissection of biological and environmental factors involved in aging (Rose and Charlesworth 1981; Tower 2019)
Cs females showed substantial Factorial Discriminant Analysis (FDA) variations during the first 3 days followed by slighter changes while the most visible changes in 5670-tra and desat1 females occurred between 6 hours and 2 days
Summary
While physiological changes in aging animals were already described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (Woodcox 2018), in the 1930's researchers started to precisely measure quantitative changes occurring during aging (Crimm and Short 1934; Horst et al 1934; McCay et al 1939). Most of these studies dealt with rats, a model with an average 4–5 years lifespan. Individuals of an outbred D. melanogaster strain raised in the laboratory, at 25°C on a yeast-rich diet, and under uncrowded condition, show a median lifespan of approximately 50–60 days with very few individuals surviving over 90 days (Lee et al 2008; Skorupa et al 2008; Ziehm et al 2013)
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