Insect Diapause

Our highly seasonal world restricts insect activity to brief portions of the year. This feature necessitates a sophisticated interpretation of seasonal changes and enactment of mechanisms for bringing development to a halt and then reinitiating it when the inimical season is past. The dormant state of diapause serves to bridge the unfavourable seasons, and its timing provides a powerful mechanism for synchronizing insect development. This book explores how seasonal signals are monitored and used by insects to enact specific molecular pathways that generate the diapause phenotype. The broad perspective offered here scales from the ecological to the molecular and thus provides a comprehensive view of this exciting and vibrant research field, offering insights on topics ranging from pest management, evolution, speciation, climate change and disease transmission, to human health, as well as analogies with other forms of invertebrate dormancy and mammalian hibernation.

Contents:

• 1. Confronting the challenges of a seasonal environment;
• 2. What seasons are being avoided?;
• 3. Variation in the diapause response;
• 4. The cost of diapause and some diapause alternatives;
• 5. Interpreting seasonal cues to program diapause entry;
• 6. Preparing for diapause;
• 7. The diapause state;
• 8. Ending diapause and reinitiating development;
• 9. Molecular signaling pathways that regulate diapause;
• 10. Genetic control of diapause;
• 11. Evolution of diapause;
• 12. Wider implications;
•       References; Index.