The organization of the digestion here described is the same as found for other hemipterans such as the seed sucker, D. peruvianus ( Silva and Terra, 1994) and a blood feeder, Rhodnius prolixus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) ( Ferreira et al., 1988 and Terra and Ferreira, 2012). Quantitative comparisons between salivary and midgut enzymes that include
collagenase assays should be carried out in other predatory bugs. This will permit the evaluation as to whether true pre-oral digestion is actually as common as it is supposed to be or if it is usually only a pre-oral dispersion of prey tissues, as described here. This work was supported by the Brazilian research agencies FAPESP, CNPq, CAPES and FAPEMIG. We thank Dr. C. Ferreira for helpful discussions and W. Caldeira, M.V. Cruz and the Nucleus of Microscopy and Microanalysis-UFV for technical assistance. M.C.Q. Fialho is a research Roxadustat mw fellow of CAPES, N.R. Moreira is a graduate fellow of FAPESP, W.R. Terra is a staff member of his department, research fellow of CNPq and a member of the INCT-Entomologia Molecular, J.C. Zanuncio and J.E. Serrão are staff members
of their departments and research fellows of CNPq. “
“Males of many species can respond to the likely threat of post-mating competition (Parker et al., 1996 and Parker et al., 1997) by altering their behaviour prior to mating (Bretman et al., 2011a) and/or the amount of sperm or seminal fluid proteins allocated to
each partner learn more (Wedell et al., 2002 and Wigby et al., 2009). For males to accurately and adaptively match the expression of a trait to their competitive environment they must be able to significantly influence the expression check of that trait. For apparently male-limited traits such as sperm and seminal fluid production, the degree of control of sex-specific expression should be high. However, this may not be the case for ‘shared’ reproductive traits, such as mating duration, that arise as an emergent property of the interaction between males and females (Arnqvist and Rowe, 2005). Intuitively, the value of shared traits should be influenced by both sexes. However, this need not be true if one sex has evolved predominant control or precise mechanisms for matching the value of the trait to the environment. Determining the relative influence of each sex over shared traits that can exhibit plasticity to the social and sexual environment is important to understand the repertoire of plastic responses that are available to each sex. In order to test whether there is sex specific control of a plastic shared trait we require a system in which the shared trait can be expressed, but where one sex is rendered incapable of exerting any influence over it. In this study we were able to achieve this by adapting methodology from classic studies of courtship in Drosophila melanogaster ( Cook and Cook, 1975, Grossfield, 1972 and Spieth, 1966).