01 September 2011

Tissue hypoxia is the trigger for caterpillar molting

As caterpillars grow larger, it is periodically necessary for them to shed their skin (actually their exoskeleton).  When you raise them in captivity, you can sometimes find in the container, mixed with the frass, a complete exoskeleton as shown above (this one may have come from the final morph into the chrysalis stage).  At other times you find just the head capsules (below).
I had never pondered the question of what triggers the caterpillar to molt until I encountered an article this past week at PhysOrg.
The research shows that a baby moth's respiratory system is fixed in size at each stage of development, which limits its oxygen intake. Sensing it is low on oxygen apparently signals to the insect that it cannot continue to grow without proceeding to the next stage of its development, by molting...

In the new study, Nijhout and his graduate student, Viviane Callier, measured the size of the caterpillar's respiratory system. They found that the insect's tracheal tubing is fixed in size at each stage of its larval life. Other parts of the caterpillar's body can grow, but not the respiratory tubing. As a result, the insect eventually begins to suffocate. The only way it can continue to mature is to shed the old tubing for newer, longer ones...

In the new study, she and Nijhout tested oxygen's effects on the caterpillars' body size by placing the larvae into airtight glove boxes and pumping in air with different amounts of oxygen. Under hypoxic conditions, the caterpillars molted at body sizes well below the critical weight
Not discussed at the link (though perhaps in the PNAS article) is the question that immediately comes to my mind: what if you raise the caterpillars in a hyperoxic environment?  Would the various instars grow to unusually large sizes prior to molting?  Would the resultant chrysalis and butterfly be extra large?

Does anyone have a tank of 40% O2 they could loan me next summer?

1 comment:

  1. I wonder if this may be a partial explanation of why/how some insects millions of years ago reached wingspans of >3ft (ie, higher O2 levels in the atmosphere).

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