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Adaptive changes in morph and preference induced by novel host plants mediate host specialization of the cotton–melon aphid

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Abstract

Flexibility and variations in morphological and physiological traits are the key for insect herbivores to adapt to environments. The cotton–melon aphid Aphis gossypii Glover is a polyphagous insect which populations exhibit host specialization. Feeding experience on specific host plants converted host specialization in this aphid. However, adaptive changes of this aphids during the host conversion are still unclear. Here, we examined variations in body length, leg segments, and host preference of the cotton-specialized and cucurbit-specialized aphids, A. gossypii, induced by novel host plants. We found that on the original host plants, body, femur, tibia, and tarsus of the cucurbit-specialized aphids were significantly longer than these of the cotton-specialized aphids. However, feeding on zucchini or cowpea resulted in the short body and leg segments in the cucurbit-specialized aphids, whereas led to the long body and leg segments or no changes in the cotton-specialized aphids, and consequently, the tarsus lengths became equal between the cotton- and cucurbit-specialized aphids. Interestingly, the change trends of the relative lengths of leg segments to body length with the increase of reared generation on zucchini were almost different between the cucurbit-specialized and cotton-specialized aphids, especially the relative length of tarsus, but on cowpea, the trends were similar. Meanwhile, feeding on zucchini altered host preference of the cotton-specialized aphids, but not of the cucurbit-specialized aphids. Novel host plants induce adaptive changes in leg segments and host preference of aphids, suggesting the conversion of host specialization.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Wei Wu for help with the host choice experiment. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31672034, 31070377).

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by XDL and LM. The first draft of the manuscript was written by XDL and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiang-Dong Liu.

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Ma, L., Liu, XD. Adaptive changes in morph and preference induced by novel host plants mediate host specialization of the cotton–melon aphid. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 14, 453–462 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-020-09756-7

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