The Cricket as a Model Organism Development, Regeneration, and Behavior

About this book

The Cricket as a Model Organism covers a broad range of topics about the cricket from its development, regeneration, physiology, nervous system, and behavior with remarkable recent updates by adapting the new, sophisticated molecular techniques including RNAi and other genome editing methods. It also provides detailed protocols on an array of topics and for basic experiments on the cricket.While the cricket has been one of the best models for neuroethological studies over the past 60 years, it has now become the most important system for studying basal hemimetabolous insects. The studies of Gryllus and related species of cricket will yield insight into evolutionary features that are not evident in other insect model systems, which mainly focus on holometabolous insects such as Drosophila, Tribolium, and Bombyx. Research on crickets and grasshoppers will be important for the development of pest-control strategies, given that some of the most notorious pests also belong to the order Orthoptera. At the same time, crickets possess an enormously high "food conversion efficiency", making them a potentially important food source for an ever-expanding human population.The Cricket as a Model Organism provides a comprehensive source of information as well as potential new applications in pest management and food production of the cricket. It will inspire scientists in various disciplines to use the cricket model system to investigate interesting and innovative questions.

Contents

Preface
Part I Development and Regeneration
1 History of cricket biology
2 Early development and diversity of Gryllus appendages
3 Leg formation and regeneration
4 Eye development and photoreception of a hemimetabolous insect, Gryllus bimaculatus
5 An early embryonic diapause stage and developmental plasticity in the band-legged ground cricket Dianemobius nigrofasciatus

Part II Physiology, Nervous System, and Behavior
6 Molecular approach to the circadian clock mechanism in the cricket
7 Hormonal circadian rhythm in the wing-polymorphic cricket Gryllus firmus: Integrating chronobiology, endocrinology and evolution
8 Plasticity in the cricket central nervous system
9 Learning and memory
10 Neurons and networks underlying singing behaviour
11 The cricket auditory pathway: neural processing of acoustic signals
12 Neuromodulators and the control of aggression in crickets
13 Fighting behavior-Understanding the mechanisms of group size-dependent aggression
14 Cercal system-mediated anti-predator behaviors
15 The biochemical basis of life history adaptation: Gryllus studies lead the way
16 Reproductive behavior and physiology in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus

Part III Experimental Approaches
17 Protocols for olfactory conditioning experiments
18 Optical recording methods – How to measure of neural activities with Calcium imaging
19 Trackball systems for analyzing cricket phonotaxis
20 Synthetic approaches for observing and measuring cricket behaviors
21 Protocols in the cricket

Index

Customer Reviews