School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Heredity (Edinb). 2021 Jun;126(6):869-883. doi: 10.1038/s41437-021-00420-1. Epub 2021 Mar 25.
Flour beetles of the genus Tribolium have been utilised as informative study systems for over a century and contributed to major advances across many fields. This review serves to highlight the significant historical contribution that Tribolium study systems have made to the fields of ecology and evolution, and to promote their use as contemporary research models. We review the broad range of studies employing Tribolium to make significant advances in ecology and evolution. We show that research using Tribolium beetles has contributed a substantial amount to evolutionary and ecological understanding, especially in the fields of population dynamics, reproduction and sexual selection, population and quantitative genetics, and behaviour, physiology and life history. We propose a number of future research opportunities using Tribolium, with particular focus on how their amenability to forward and reverse genetic manipulation may provide a valuable complement to other insect models.
粉斑螟属（Tribolium）的粉斑螟已被用作信息研究系统超过一个世纪，并为许多领域的重大进展做出了贡献。这篇综述旨在强调 Tribolium 研究系统对生态学和进化领域的重要历史贡献，并促进它们作为当代研究模型的使用。我们回顾了广泛利用 Tribolium 来在生态学和进化领域取得重大进展的研究。我们表明，使用 Tribolium 甲虫进行的研究为进化和生态理解做出了重大贡献，特别是在种群动态、繁殖和性选择、种群和数量遗传学以及行为、生理学和生活史领域。我们提出了一些使用 Tribolium 的未来研究机会，特别关注其对正向和反向遗传操作的适应性如何为其他昆虫模型提供有价值的补充。
