2006: Gluttony and sex in female ixodid ticks: How do they compare to other blood-sucking arthropods?
- From: "CaliforniaLyme" <CaliforniaLyme@xxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Nov 2006 07:15:55 -0800
1: J Insect Physiol. 2006 Oct 11; [Epub ahead of print] Links
Gluttony and sex in female ixodid ticks: How do they compare to other
blood-sucking arthropods?
Reuben Kaufman W.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Alta., Canada T6G 2E9.
The central issue dealt with here is the role of copulation in the
control of feeding behaviour in ticks and some haematophagous insects.
Female ticks of the family Ixodidae normally engorge to approximately
100x their unfed body weight, and then drop from the host, produce and
lay eggs, and die. Virgins, on the other hand, normally do not exceed
5-40% (depending on species) of the normal engorged body weight. But
instead of detaching voluntarily at that point most virgins remain
fixed to the host for extended periods, waiting for males to find them
so they can complete engorgement. Virgin haematophagous insects, and
virgin ticks of the family Argasidae display little, if any, reduction
in blood meal size compared to mated females, at least not during the
first ovarian cycle. During subsequent ovarian cycles, meal size in
some virgin insects may be somewhat reduced depending on how many eggs
are retained in the reproductive tract, but the reduction is not nearly
to the same extent as that observed for virgin ixodid females. The
stimulatory effect of copulation on engorgement in the latter is caused
by a pair of proteins (voraxin alpha and beta) produced in the testis
and transferred to the female with the spermatophore. Here, I propose
why it might be adaptive for an ixodid female to remain small until
mated. The hypothesis is suggested from the facts that ixodid ticks
remain attached to the host for days (rather than minutes), and that
virgin ticks, above a certain critical weight, lose all opportunity for
producing viable offspring should they be groomed off the host
prematurely, or should the host die while ticks are still attached.
PMID: 17113595 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
.
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