Publicaties
Uncovering the role of juvenile hormone in ovary development and egg laying in bumble bees KU Leuven
Juvenile hormone (JH) regulates developmental and physiological processes in insects. In bumble bees, the hormone acts as a gonadotropin that mediates ovary development, but the exact physiological pathways involved in ovary activation and subsequent egg laying are poorly understood. In this study, we examine how queen hibernation state, caste, and species impact the gonadotropic effect of JH in bumble bee queens through methoprene (JH analogue) ...
The effect of forager loss on honeybee workers temporal polyethism and social network structure KU Leuven
Bacterial volatiles elicit differential olfactory responses in insect species from the same and different trophic levels KU Leuven
Insect communities consist of species from several trophic levels that have to forage for suitable resources among and within larger patches of nonresources. To locate their resources, insects use diverse stimuli, including olfactory, visual, acoustic, tactile and gustatory cues. While most research has focused on cues derived from plants and other insects, there is mounting evidence that insects also respond to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) ...
Chemical signatures of egg maternity and Dufour's gland in Vespine wasps KU Leuven
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) are often used in the chemical communication among social insects. CHCs can be used in nestmate recognition and as queen pheromones, the latter allows the regulation of the reproductive division of labor. In the common wasp Vespula vulgaris, CHCs and egg-marking hydrocarbons are caste-specific, being hydrocarbon queen pheromones and egg maternity signals. Whether these compounds are conserved among other Vespinae ...
DNA methylation is associated with codon degeneracy in a species of bumblebee KU Leuven
Social insects display extreme phenotypic differences between sexes and castes even though the underlying genome can be almost identical. Epigenetic processes have been proposed as a possible mechanism for mediating these phenotypic differences. Using whole genome bisulfite sequencing of queens, males, and reproductive female workers we have characterised the sex- and caste-specific methylome of the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. We have ...