Effect Of Unfeeding And Mating Behaviour On The Development Of Flight Muscle In Agrotisypsilon (Rottemberg)

Flight is an important biological activity of migratory insects, such as finding food and mates,choosing spawning grounds, evading predators, long distance migration and so on. Agrotis ypsilon(Rottemberg) plays an important role in representative migratory underground pests of China andbrings a great economic loss of agricultural production. For comprehensive understanding thephysiological mechanism of the development of flight muscles in Agrotis ypsilon (Rottemberg) and thethe effects of environment factors on them, forecasting the disasters and trends of migration in greenand scientific method, we studied the structure features of flight muscle degradation, cytologicalmechanism of degradation, utilization of energy substances and structural matter content under thecondition of starvation or mating. The main results are as follows:1. We observed the ultrastructures of flight muscles in adult females by electron microscope. Theresults show that the feeding females would degenerate after4days of the moth life; starvation preventsprevious development and mid degeneration of flight muscles, and promotes later degeneration; matingaccelerates the degradation of flight muscles.2. The effects of starvation and mating on the energy substances in flight muscles were analysed.The results indicated that the glycogen was high in females at the beginning of emergence as theglyceride was low. The both were higher in mid-to late term. However, the conditions of male were justreserved. The female and males used energy substances in different methods, but the lipid was the mainenergy to flight. Change ranges of glyceride and glycogen contents in hungry females was small, andmost of conditions were less than the control; after continuous reduction, the glyceride in hungry malesadded to a high level which was significant difference with control, but only the mid glycogen contentwas much higher. Hunger affected the flight muscles of male and females to use the energy substances.Compared with control, glyceride and glycogen contents both in mating females were higher, and laterall fell to much lower levels than control. It states that mating makes flight muscles reduce to use energysubstances.3. The apoptosis was detected in the flight muscles of10-day-old adults by TUNEL. It indicatesthat apoptosis is one way of cellular breakdown in flight muscles. We detected apoptosis in treatedfemales’ flight muscles by day7after emergency, except control. It demonstrates that hunger andmating could promote flight muscle cell to apoptosis.4. The total contents of NDA and protein in tergal longitudinal muscles were detected. Compared1-day females, DNA content from hungry males was higher. From day5to day10, hungry females andmales continuously reduced, and females’ were all less than the same day controls’ while males’ wereopposite. These indicate that hunger promotes females’ DNA to degenerate as prevents males’degeneration. The changes of protein contents in females’ tergal longitudinal muscles were same withmales’. From day5to day10, both males and females were lower than controls. Those indicate that hunger promote protein of flight muscles to degenerate.