Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Royal Entomological Society Journal Awards.
Physiological Entomology is a distinguished Royal Entomological Society journal with a unique focus on insects and arthropods, investigating their functioning and adaptations using experimental methods.
Papers from this journal address any area of insect physiology and provide valuable insights into how insects cope with their biotic and abiotic environments. Emphasizing physiological and experimental approaches, we publish research that fosters a deeper understanding of basic insect biology, the link between genotype and phenotype, and how insects adapt to environmental change.
Physiological Entomology Winner
Robert Holdbrook: The transition from diet to blood: Exploring homeostasis in the insect haemolymph nutrient pool (49.3)
Nutrition is vital to health, but while the link between diet and body nutritional composition is well explored in humans and other vertebrates, this information is not well understood in insects, despite the vital roles they play in ecosystems, and their increasing use as experimental models.
“This paper provides new information on the relationship between diet and nutrition using a polyphagous lepidopteran insect. It shows how diet can change nutrient levels in the blood. Protein levels and amino acid composition were particularly affected by diet. This is important because these nutrients are often limiting factors for insect fitness. The implications of this allostatic rather than homeostatic response to diet in a generalist insect open up questions for future research such as if this is an adaptation for polyphagy, the consequences for fitness and if polyphagous insects are better adapted to variation in amino acid levels.”
– Judges’ comments
Robert in his lab at Lancaster University Formerly at Lancaster University, Robert is now a director at Thrive Sciences Ltd, a company spun from Lancaster University after the completion of his PhD. His PhD focused on providing sustainable alternatives to harsh chemicals and wasteful practices, in order to reduce harm to natural ecosystems. His primary interest is in biotechnology and his current focus involves developing biological solutions that tackle the challenges of human-made pollution. He has recently published on how combining in vivo and in vitro approaches can help to better understand host-pathogen nutritional interactions.
His winning article used Nutritional Geometry to explore the rapid physiological response to ingested nutrients in the haemolymph nutritional profile of Spodoptera littoralis (cotton leafworm) caterpillars. The authors asked whether blood nutrients are maintained homeostatically in the face of variable nutritional intake, or if regulation is more flexible for some nutrients than others (allostasis), which allows animals to adapt to stress by responding in a way that prioritises efficiency of responses in the face of trade-offs.
Rather than strict homeostasis of blood nutritional properties, an allostatic model seemed to be a better fit for blood nutrient regulation in this generalist herbivore. This flexibility in response to the nutritional composition of the diet may, in part, explain how this species has evolved to extreme dietary generalism and may play a role in its worldwide pest status.
Spodoptera littoralis caterpillar
