Sex, age, and parental harmonic convergence behavior affect the immune performance of Aedes aegypti offspring.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Reitmayer CM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8196008 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Aedes aegypti mosquitoes transmit pathogens such as yellow fever, dengue, Zika, and chikungunya viruses to millions of human hosts annually [1]. As such, understanding Ae. aegypti courtship and mating biology could prove crucial to the success of disease control efforts that target reproduction. Potentially to communicate reproductive fitness [2,3], mosquito males and females harmonize their flight tones prior to mating in a behavior known as harmonic convergence (HC) [4]. Furthermore, after mating or treatment with extracts from male accessory glands (MAG), which make seminal fluid molecules, female Ae. aegypti become resistant, or refractory, to re-mating [5]. To test the hypothesis that mating and MAG fluids inhibit a female's ability to induce HC in males, we recorded audio of pre-copulatory flight interactions between virgin males and either virgin, mated, or MAG extract-injected females and analyzed these recordings for the presence or absence of HC. We found that mating and MAG extract lower HC occurrence by 53% compared with all other controls. Our results further suggest that mating may inhibit HC indirectly via the broader range of MAG-induced female refractory mating behaviors. Together, our results demonstrate an important new role for MAG molecules in mediating female post-mating behavior.
| S-EPMC6800996 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Despite the importance of mosquito mating biology to reproductive control strategies, a mechanistic understanding of individual mating interactions is currently lacking. Using synchronised high-speed video and audio recordings, we quantified behavioural and acoustic features of mating attempts between tethered female and free-flying male Aedes aegypti. In most couplings, males were actively displaced by female kicks in the early phases of the interaction, while flight cessation prior to adoption of the pre-copulatory mating pose also inhibited copulation. Successful males were kicked at a reduced rate and sustained paired contact-flight for longer than those that were rejected. We identified two distinct phases of acoustic interaction. Rapid frequency modulation of flight tones was observed in all interactions up to acceptance of the male. Harmonic convergence (wingbeat frequency matching) was detected more often in successful attempts, coinciding with the transition to stabilised paired flight and subsequent genital contact. Our findings provide a clearer understanding of the relationship between acoustic interactions and mating performance in mosquitoes, offering insights which may be used to target improvements in laboratory reared lines.
| S-EPMC6375921 | biostudies-literature
Project description:During courtship males often communicate information about their fitness to females. The matching of harmonic components of flight tone in male-female pairs of flying mosquitoes, or harmonic convergence, was recently described. This behaviour occurs prior to mating and has been suggested to function in mate selection. We investigated the hypothesis that harmonic convergence is a component of mosquito courtship. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that harmonic convergence should provide information to potential mates about fitness benefits. We measured the effect of harmonic convergence behaviour on the direct and indirect benefits obtained by females. We found that the sons of pairs that converged at harmonic frequencies prior to mating had increased mating success and that these offspring were themselves more likely to converge prior to mating. These results suggest that males may be able to signal information about their genetic quality to females prior to mating and that this signal may be heritable. These findings are important for our understanding of mosquito behaviour and have applications in the control of mosquito-borne disease. This study also contributes to the study of male-female interactions and signal coevolution.
| S-EPMC3190198 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe mosquito Aedes aegypti is a medically important, globally distributed vector of the viruses that cause dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika. Although reproduction and mate choice are key components of vector population dynamics and control, our understanding of the mechanisms of sexual selection in mosquitoes remains poor. In "good genes" models of sexual selection, females use male cues as an indicator of both mate and offspring genetic quality. Recent studies in Ae. aegypti provide evidence that male wingbeats may signal aspects of offspring quality and performance during mate selection in a process known as harmonic convergence. However, the extent to which harmonic convergence may signal overall inherent quality of mates and their offspring remains unknown.Methodology/principal findingsTo examine this, we measured the relationship between acoustic signaling and a broad panel of parent and offspring fitness traits in two generations of field-derived Ae. aegypti originating from dengue-endemic field sites in Thailand. Our data show that in this population of mosquitoes, harmonic convergence does not signal male fertility, female fecundity, or male flight performance traits, which despite displaying robust variability in both parents and their offspring were only weakly heritable.Conclusions/significanceTogether, our findings suggest that vector reproductive control programs should treat harmonic convergence as an indicator of some, but not all aspects of inherent quality, and that sexual selection likely affects Ae. aegypti in a trait-, population-, and environment-dependent manner.
| S-EPMC8282061 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This analysis compare gene expression between 4 day old sugar fed female and male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Keywords: Aedes aegypti sex specific expression
2007-05-15 | GSE7813 | GEO
Project description:Resistance mechanisms to synthetic insecticides often include point mutations and increased expression of genes encoding detoxification enzymes. Since pyrethroids are the main adulticides used against Aedes aegypti, which vectors pathogens such as Zika virus, understanding resistance to this insecticide class is of significant relevance. We focused on adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-binding cassette (ABC) transporters in the pyrethroid-resistant Puerto Rico (PR) strain of Ae. aegypti. We investigated the expression patterns of six ABC transporters previously characterized as differentially expressed in insecticide-challenged mosquitoes, or increased mRNA expression in pyrethroid-resistant Ae. aegypti, by comparing PR to the Rockefeller (Rock) susceptible strain. No constitutive differential expression between strains was detected, but expression differences for these genes was influenced by sex and age, suggesting that their role is independent from resistance in PR. Instead, ABC transporters may be induced after insecticide exposure. Challenging mosquitoes with deltamethrin, with or without ABC transporter modulators, showed that Rock and PR responded differently, but a contribution of ABC transporters to deltamethrin toxicity is suspected. Moreover, the effect of dexamethasone, which enhanced the inhibition of nerve firing by deltamethrin, was observed using a Drosophila central nervous system preparation, showing synergy of these two compounds through the potential inhibition of ABC transporters.
| S-EPMC6925122 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Parental age can have considerable effects on offspring phenotypes and health. However, intergenerational effects may also have longer term effects on offspring fitness. Few studies have investigated parental age effects on offspring fitness in natural populations while also testing for sex- and environment-specific effects. Further, longitudinal parental age effects may be masked by population-level processes such as the selective disappearance of poor-quality individuals. Here, we used multigenerational data collected on individually marked Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis) to investigate the impact of maternal and paternal age on offspring life span and lifetime reproductive success. We found negative effects of maternal age on female offspring life span and lifetime reproductive success, which were driven by within-mother effects. There was no difference in annual reproductive output of females born to older versus younger mothers, suggesting that the differences in offspring lifetime reproductive success were driven by effects on offspring life span. In contrast, there was no association between paternal age and female offspring life span or either maternal or paternal age and male offspring life span. Lifetime reproductive success, but not annual reproductive success, of male offspring increased with maternal age, but this was driven by between-mother effects. No paternal age effects were found on female offspring lifetime reproductive success but there was a positive between-father effect on male offspring lifetime reproductive success. We did not find strong evidence for environment-dependent parental age effects. Our study provides evidence for parental age effects on the lifetime fitness of offspring and shows that such effects can be sex dependent. These results add to the growing literature indicating the importance of intergenerational effects on long-term offspring performance and highlight that these effects can be an important driver of variation in longevity and fitness in the wild.
| S-EPMC9783413 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Plasma lipid levels are highly heritable traits, but known genetic loci can only explain a small portion of their heritability.In this study, we analyzed the role of parental levels of total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides (TGs) in explaining the values of the corresponding traits in adult offspring. We also evaluated the contribution of nongenetic factors that influence lipid traits (age, body mass index, smoking, medications, and menopause) alone and in combination with variability at the genetic loci known to associate with TC, LDL-C, HDL-C, and TG levels. We performed comparisons among different sex-specific regression models in 416 families from the Framingham Heart Study and 304 from the SardiNIA cohort. Models including parental lipid levels explain significantly more of the trait variation than models without these measures, explaining up to ?39% of the total trait variation. Of this variation, the parent-of-origin effect explains as much as ?15% and it does so in a sex-specific way. This observation is not owing to shared environment, given that spouse-pair correlations were negligible (<1.5% explained variation in all cases) and is distinct from previous genetic and acquired factors that are known to influence serum lipid levels.These findings support the concept that unknown genetic and epigenetic contributors are responsible for most of the heritable component of the plasma lipid phenotype, and that, at present, the clinical utility of knowing age-matched parental lipid levels in assessing risk of dyslipidemia supersedes individual locus effects. Our results support the clinical utility of knowing parental lipid levels in assessing future risk of dyslipidemia.
| S-EPMC4608079 | biostudies-other
Project description:The environmental conditions experienced by parents can influence offspring phenotype along with the conditions experienced by offspring. These parental effects are clear in organisms that display parental care and are less clear in other organisms. Here, we consider effects of parental and offspring larval nutrition on offspring development time, survivorship and infection with dengue virus in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito vector of dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika. Parents were raised on either high or low larval detritus inputs with subsequent offspring being divided into two groups, one receiving high nutrients and the other low. Low nutrient females from low nutrient parents (LL) developed significantly slower than those from high nutrient parents (HL). Females from all parent by offspring nutrient treatment groups were equally likely to become infected with dengue virus at 24 h, 3 days and 14 days. After 14 days, high nutrient females from low nutrient parents (LH) had 11 times higher viral titres and more disseminated infections than high nutrient females from high nutrient parents (HH). These results suggest that carry-over environmental stress from the parental generation can influence life histories and arbovirus infection in Ae. aegypti females. We found males to be robust to the life-history parameters measured, suggesting sex-specific differences which may relate to their lower nutrient requirements for metamorphosis.
| S-EPMC6083674 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Increased mortality has been observed in mothers and fathers with male offspring but little is known regarding specific diseases. In a register linkage we linked women born 1925-1954 having survived to age 50 (n = 661,031) to offspring and fathers (n = 691,124). Three approaches were used: 1) number of total boy and girl offspring, 2) sex of the first and second offspring and 3) proportion of boys to total number of offspring. A sub-cohort (n = 50,736 mothers, n = 44,794 fathers) from survey data was analysed for risk factors. Mothers had increased risk of total and cardiovascular mortality that was consistent across approaches: cardiovascular mortality of 1.07 (95% CI: 1.03-1.11) per boy (approach 2), 1.04 (1.01-1.07) if the first offspring was a boy, and 1.06 (1.01-1.10) if the first two offspring were boys (approach 3). We found that sex of offspring was not associated with total or cardiovascular mortality in fathers. For other diseases or risk factors no robust associations were seen in mothers or fathers. Increased cardiovascular risk in mothers having male offspring suggests a maternal disease specific mechanism. The lack of consistent associations on measured risk factors could suggest other biological pathways than those studied play a role in generating this additional cardiovascular risk.
| S-EPMC5509737 | biostudies-literature