Rapid brain development and reduced neuromodulator titres correlate with host shifts in Rhagoletis pomonella

Abstract

Adaptation to environmental and ecological factors has been shown to play an important role in population divergence and speciation in a large number of systems [1–3]. For phytophagous insects shifting to new host plants, populations potentially need to adapt their growth and development to the new host, and at the same time modulate their behavioural preference to locate that host. Furthermore, populations on novel hosts must regulate their life-history timing to coincide with the new host phenology [4–11]. How these multiple events are synchronized between ancestral and novel hosts with vastly different phenologies and characteristics is an area of intense study for understanding the genesis of insect biodiversity.