Longevity, Growth Rate and Related Traits among Strains of <i>Tribolium castaneum</i>

Abstract

Longevity of eight laboratory strains of the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum, with various geographic backgrounds, was studied under constant laboratory conditions of 33°C and 70% relative humidity in standard medium (95% whole wheat flour and 5% dried yeast) during a period of 227 days starting from the egg stage. The eggs were collected from the same parents, first a few days after emergence and afterwards at intervals of 13, 9, 10 and 11 days. Mean survival time (MST) was found to be strain-specified. It ranges from 128.6 days for KJ (Kyoto, Japan) to 174.2 days for ES (Edinburgh, Scotland). MST was highly correlated with the percentage of adults alive after 227 days, which did not change the ranking order of strain longevity. Parental age had no effect on longevity. The mean adult longevity of the strains was correlated with the available data on adult weight, growth rate, viability and productivity. There was no relationship between adult weight and longevity. Life span was found to depend on growth rate (measured as 13-day larval weight), percent viability (from 13-day larvae to adulthood) and productivity. Developmental time was also found to influence adult life span within certain limits (two extreme strains deviated). The data suggest that ageing and death in T. castaneum is under genetic control and support the idea that ageing, allied to development, is genetically controlled.

The malathion‐specific resistance gene confers a sperm competition advantage in Tribolium castaneum

“…Perhaps the production of this modified carboxylesterase demands higher metabolic investment to support, so that functions such as mate searching or migration are constrained. Alternatively, in this relatively long‐lived insect (129–174 days depending upon strain Soliman and Lints 1975; but sometimes over 2 years, Sokoloff 1974 and references therein), there may be a trade‐off with longevity and potentially overall lifetime reproductive success. It is also possible that malathion‐resistant insects may be less tolerant or less resistant to pathogen challenge.…”

Behavioural changes in the flour beetleTribolium confusuminfected with the spirurid nematodeProtospirura muricola

“…Our longevity data show convincingly that there is a dose-related negative effect on survivorship. Tribolium confusum are known to be very long-lived beetles (Pearl et al , 1941; Soliman & Lints, 1975), and although deaths were recorded in all groups from the outset, the infected beetles died sooner in larger numbers than the control group under both group-maintained and isolated conditions. Interestingly, beetles maintained singly rather than in groups lived significantly longer, as expected (Sohal & Buchan, 1981), but nevertheless the effect of parasitism on longevity was evident under both experimental conditions, albeit over a different time scale.…”

Tribolium beetles as a model system in evolution and ecology

“…Nonetheless, age-related changes have been shown in individual-level morphological, physiological, biochemical, behavioural and pathological traits (Soliman 1987 ). Ageing research in Tribolium has generated important insights into the link between development and ageing and their genetic basis and the evolution of senescence (Soliman and Lints 1975 ; Mertz 1975 ). Some more recent work has highlighted parental-age effects on development and stress tolerance (Halle et al 2015 ) and a decline in metrics of movement with increasing age (Wexler et al 2016 ).…”