Establishment of the mayfly Cloeon dipterum as a new model system to investigate insect evolution

Abstract

The great capability of insects to adapt to new environments promoted their extraordinary diversification, resulting in the group of Metazoa with the largest number of species distributed worldwide. To understand this enormous diversity, it is essential to investigate lineages that would allow the reconstruction of the early events in the evolution of insects. However, research on insect ecology, physiology, development and evolution has mostly focused on few well-established model species. The key phylogenetic position of mayflies within Paleoptera as the sister group of the rest of winged insects and life history traits of mayflies make them an essential order to understand insect evolution. Here, we describe the establishment of a continuous culture system of the mayfly Cloeon dipterum and a series of experimental protocols and omics resources that allow the study of its development and its great regenerative capability. Thus, the establishment of Cloeon as an experimental platform paves the way to understand genomic and morphogenetic events that occurred at the origin of winged insects. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13227-019-0120-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Mayflies in Ecotoxicity Testing: Methodological Needs and Knowledge Gaps

“…Therefore, care should be taken if the results from these tests are to be used for regulatory purposes. However, a recently published protocol for culturing C. dipterum (Almudi et al 2019) should be evaluated with respect to its potential use in aquatic toxicity testing.…”

Learned Discourses: Timely Scientific Opinions

“…Therefore, care should be taken if the results from these tests are to be used for regulatory purposes. However, a recently published protocol for culturing C. dipterum (Almudi et al 2019) should be evaluated with respect to its potential use in aquatic toxicity testing.…”

Genomic adaptations to aquatic and aerial life in mayflies and the origin of wings in insects

“…Genomic DNA was extracted from C. dipterum adult males from an inbred line kept in the laboratory for seven generations 10 . Illumina and Nanopore technologies were used to sequence the genome ( Supplementary Table 1-3).…”

“…All these features make mayflies a fundamental order to investigate the origin of evolutionary novelties associated with the conquest of new habitats. The recent establishment of a continuous culture system of the mayfly C. dipterum, a cosmopolitan Baetidae species with a life cycle of just six weeks, makes it now possible the access to all embryonic and postembryonic stages 10 , overcoming past challenges to study paleopterans which are generally not very amenable to rear in the lab.…”