Adult diel locomotor behaviour in the agricultural pest Plutella xylostella reflects temperature-driven and light-repressed reg-ulation rather than coupling to circadian clock gene rhythms

Abstract

The diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, is arguably the most economically impact-ful and widespread lepidopteran pest. Though the larval P. xylostella life stage is re-sponsible for most of this cost through the consumption of crops, it is the adult form that spreads the pest to fresh crops all around the world, seeking them out in a season-ally expanding range. It is therefore important to understand the activity rhythms of adult P. xylostella in response to environmental cues such as light and temperature. We analysed diel rhythms in both adult clock gene expression and locomotor behaviour for the ROTH P. xylostella strain. Real-time quantitative PCR analyses of P. xylostella demonstrated diel rhythms for transcripts of the clock genes period and timeless under both entrained and free-running conditions indicating the presence of a functional daily timekeeping mechanism. However, adult locomotor rhythms exhibited tempera-ture-driven and light-repressed regulation rather than circadian control. Thus, our analyses show a lack of coupling between the P. xylostella circadian clock and adult locomotor behaviour, which may be relevant in predicting the activity patterns of this agricultural pest.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Connor J. Tyler: orcid.org/0000-0002-9849-4074

ORCID for Shubhangi Mahajan: orcid.org/0000-0002-5444-1309

ORCID for Lena Smith: orcid.org/0009-0004-1754-1548

ORCID for Herman Wijnen: orcid.org/0000-0002-8710-5176

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