Abstract
Summary To investigate the physiological processes during oosorption, the study followed histological changes in the ovaries in females of a stink bug, Plautia crossota stali, in which oosorption was induced by starvation. The first change observed in the ovaries in starved females was disappearance of intercellular spaces between follicle cells surrounding oocytes. In the mid-stage of oosorption, yolk granules in the oocytes were broken down, their contents including vitellogenin were spread over the cytoplasm of oocytes, and they seemed to be phagocytosed by the follicle cells. In a late stage, the follicles shrank and oocyte contents greatly decreased in volume, so that the follicle cell layer was folded in a complex way. Film in situ zymography detected a high level of proteinase activity in the follicle cell layer during oosorption. These results suggested that the follicle cells play an important role in taking up and degrading oocyte contents during oosorption.
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