Abbot Patrick, Tooker John, Lawson Sarah P
Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Medical Research Building III, Nashville, TN, 37235, USA.
Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, 501 ASI Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
J Chem Ecol. 2018 Sep;44(9):770-784. doi: 10.1007/s10886-018-0955-z. Epub 2018 Apr 10.
Aphids have long been recognized as good phytochemists. They are small sap-feeding plant herbivores with complex life cycles that can involve cyclical parthenogenesis and seasonal host plant alternation, and most are plant specialists. Aphids have distinctive traits for identifying and exploiting their host plants, including the expression of polyphenisms, a form of discrete phenotypic plasticity characteristic of insects, but taken to extreme in aphids. In a relatively small number of species, a social polyphenism occurs, involving sub-adult "soldiers" that are behaviorally or morphologically specialized to defend their nestmates from predators. Soldiers are sterile in many species, constituting a form of eusociality and reproductive division of labor that bears striking resemblances with other social insects. Despite a wealth of knowledge about the chemical ecology of non-social aphids and their phytophagous lifestyles, the molecular and chemoecological mechanisms involved in social polyphenisms in aphids are poorly understood. We provide a brief primer on aspects of aphid life cycles and chemical ecology for the non-specialists, and an overview of the social biology of aphids, with special attention to chemoecological perspectives. We discuss some of our own efforts to characterize how host plant chemistry may shape social traits in aphids. As good phytochemists, social aphids provide a bridge between the study of insect social evolution sociality, and the chemical ecology of plant-insect interactions. Aphids provide many promising opportunities for the study of sociality in insects, and to understand both the convergent and novel traits that characterize complex sociality on plants.
蚜虫长期以来一直被认为是优秀的植物化学家。它们是小型吸食植物汁液的植食性昆虫，具有复杂的生命周期，可能涉及周期性孤雌生殖和季节性寄主植物交替，并且大多数是专食性植物昆虫。蚜虫具有识别和利用寄主植物的独特特征，包括多型现象的表现，这是昆虫特有的一种离散表型可塑性形式，但在蚜虫中表现得更为极端。在相对少数的物种中，会出现社会多型现象，其中包括亚成虫“兵蚜”，它们在行为或形态上具有专门化特征，以保护其同伴免受捕食者侵害。在许多物种中，兵蚜是不育的，这构成了一种真社会性和生殖分工形式，与其他社会性昆虫有着惊人的相似之处。尽管对非社会性蚜虫的化学生态学及其植食性生活方式已有丰富的了解，但蚜虫社会多型现象所涉及的分子和化学生态学机制仍知之甚少。我们为非专业人士提供了关于蚜虫生命周期和化学生态学方面的简要入门知识，以及蚜虫社会生物学的概述，并特别关注化学生态学视角。我们讨论了我们自己为描述寄主植物化学如何塑造蚜虫社会特征所做的一些努力。作为优秀的植物化学家，社会性蚜虫为昆虫社会进化社会性的研究与植物 - 昆虫相互作用的化学生态学之间架起了一座桥梁。蚜虫为研究昆虫社会性以及理解植物上复杂社会性所特有的趋同和新颖特征提供了许多有前景的机会。
