Japan Eco-Evo English Seminar #9: Gall-forming aphids, small insects with great power: female-biased sex allocation via female competition induces novel insect gall organogenesis in plants

The seminar aims to initiate interactions between international and Japanese researchers and students in the field of Ecology and Evolution. The 9th event is presented by Dr. Xin Tong, SPDR Fellow of Cell Function Research Team at RIKEN CSRS.

Abstract:
Gall-forming aphids are small plant-sucking insects and, remarkably, they can induce novel plant organs called galls for reproduction and nutrient supply. Gall development is mainly controlled by insects, and they tend to be species-specific tissues that can be regarded as an extension of the insect phenotype. Interestingly, some inducer aphids have fighting behavior to usurp incipient galls, particularly for species that are more likely to fail at inducing galls at the early stage. In this seminar, I will talk about a new model I proposed, gall-forming aphids, to test the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, which says that if mothers differ in the amounts of reproductive resources to which they have access, then more fecund mothers should allocate more towards males with the greater reproductive return. I concluded that female–female competition leads to female-biased sex allocation, which contrasts with the original hypothesis, with reversed sex roles. I will end with an introduction of current research trends in insect gall organogenesis.

Timeline
15:00~15:30: seminar
15:30~16:00: questions and discussion
16:00~: mixer

Please apply from here: https://sites.google.com/view/jee-english-seminar