昆虫趋泥行为的研究进展

昆虫取食、生殖等行为一直备受行为学家和进化生物学学家的关注。趋泥行为是鳞翅目昆虫中较为常见的一种补充营养的特殊行为。随着众多假说的提出,趋泥行为发生的内在机制逐渐成为行为生态学和进化生物学研究的热点问题之一。尽管昆虫趋泥行为的报道较多,但现有的理论和试验数据尚存分歧。本文简要回顾了昆虫趋泥行为的研究历史、介绍了趋泥行为发生的性别、虫龄差异及驱动力假说,评述了这一行为对昆虫生态适应及生殖生理的影响,并提出了应整合多个层面上的研究来探讨昆虫趋泥行为在生态学以及昆虫进化过程中的意义。

A Review on Mud-puddling Behavior of Herbivorous Arthropods

The behavior of feeding and reproduction of herbivorous arthropods have received much attention from behavioral ecologists and evolutional biologists. The mud-puddling behavior, including feeding on mud, various excrements and secretions of vertebrates, and carrion, is thought to be a special behavior of supplementary feeding in lepidopteran arthropods. With the introduction of various hypotheses, the occurrence mechanism of mud-puddling has become one of the hot topics in behavioral ecology and evolutional biology. Though a wealth of observations have been added to literature, the controversies still exist mainly due to lack of convincing experimental data demonstrating the underlying mechanisms. This paper briefly reviews the history of the research on the behavior of insects, introduces the hypotheses of sex and age differentials and the driving mechanisms of mud-puddling of phytophagous herbivores, discusses the effect of this behavior on the ecological fitness and reproduction, and presents the suggestions on the methodology of future''s study.