Female accessory glands and sperm reception in Tingidae (Heteroptera)

Abstract

Studies on the anatomy of the female internal organs of reproduction and the intromittent organs of 34 species of Tingidae confirm the absence of spermathecae. The accessory glands are vesicular and primitively unpaired. There is no vermiform gland and the term pseudospermatheca, introduced by Carayon in heteropteran literature. is a misnomer. The lateral oviduct and all the 7 pedicels of each ovary develop a permanent swelling in the middle that receive the spermatozoa, syringed into them through the minute pores of the armature of ejaculatory pouches of the endotheca, when it is lodged inside the bursa during copulation. The ejaculatory pouch and the bursa are so designed and adjusted for the purpose of sperm transmission. In a few species of Tingidae a median diverticulum that arises from the endotheca plugs the unpaired vesicular accessory gland. preventing wrongful lodging of the ejaculatory pouch and such a mechanism. not known so far, has been described as a unique feature. A scheme to trace the evolution of accessory gland. from a median unpaired contacaderine condition, to a paired independent gland. having its opening either in front or behind the lateral oviduct, has been detailed.

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“…In the Miridae the sperm storage organ is a large, sac-like structure attached broadly to the bursa copulatrix and is referred to as the seminal depository (Davis 1955). In the Tingidae there are competing hypotheses, with the so-called paired pseudospermathecae leading into the bursa copulatrix (Drake and Davis 1960;Lis 1999) that are alternatively interpreted as accessory glands (Livingstone and Yacoob 1990;Schuh and Weirauch 2020). In the Thaumastocoridae there are no such organs leading into the bursa copulatrix and there are ball-like structures near the base of each of the lateral oviducts instead that we refer to as reservoirs but are of unknown function.…”