Cuticle hydrocarbons in saline aquatic beetles
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Entomology
- Keywords
- CHC profile, desiccation resistance, Dytiscidae, Hydrophilidae, waterproofing cuticle., salinity
- Copyright
- © 2017 Botella-Cruz et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Cuticle hydrocarbons in saline aquatic beetles. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2967v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2967v1
Abstract
Hydrocarbons are the principal component of insects cuticle and play an important role in maintaining water balance. Cuticular impermeability could be an adaptative response to salinity and desiccation in aquatic insects; however, cuticular hydrocarbons have been poorly explored in this group and there are no previous data on saline species. We characterized cuticular hydrocarbons of adults and larvae of two saline aquatic beetles, namely Nebrioporus baeticus (Dytiscidae) and Enochrus jesusarribasi (Hydrophilidae), using a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer. The CHC profile of adults of both species, characterized by a high abundance of branched alkanes and low of unsaturated alkenes, seems to be more similar to that of some terrestrial beetles (e.g. desert Tenebrionidae) compared with other aquatic Coleoptera (freshwater Dytiscidae). Adults of E. jesusarribasi had longer chain compounds than N. baeticus, in agreement with their higher resistance to salinity and desiccation. The more permeable cuticle of larvae was characterized by a lower diversity in compounds, shorter carbon chain length and a higher proportion of unsaturated hydrocarbons compared with that of the adults. These results suggest that osmotic stress on aquatic insects could exert a selection pressure on CHC profile similar to aridity in terrestrial species.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Relative abundance (mean ± SE) of the cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) identified by GC/MS in the two studied species
S1. Relative abundance (mean ± SE) of the cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) identified by GC/MS in the two studied species. KI: Kovat index; n: number of larvae, males and females of the total analized where the compound is present. .