Biological evidences for successive oogenesis and egg-laying of Matsumurasca onukii

Abstract

Tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is one of the most important horticultural cash crops, and tea green leafhopper (Matsumurasca onukii) is an extremely harmful sap-sucking pest of tea plant. Serious generation overlapping, which is mainly caused by the long oviposition period, leads to poor control effect of pesticides on this pest in the tea plantation. But the intuitive evidences of continuous oogenesis and egg-laying of this pest are still lacking, which seriously hindered the development of genetic control methods. Here, we clarified the main structures of the inner reproductive system of tea green leafhopper female adult. Oviposition behaviors were monitored as well, and six oviposition steps were recorded. According to the maturity of oocytes, the maturity stages of the reproductive system under different copulation periods were classified into 4 stages. For female adults at stage IV, mature and immature oocytes were presented simultaneously, and the developmental levels of oocytes were asynchronous among different ovarioles. The proportion of gravid females with mature oocytes significantly increased when the continuous copulation time was prolonged. In sync with the development of the ovary maturity, female adults started to slightly deposit eggs at the 5th day, and then increased dramatically. In addition, we found that, whether mature or immature, oocytes in the ovarioles always emitted green fluorescence under blue light excitation, which in turn provide solid proof for the new egg detection method from the insect physiology point of view.