Influence of two methods of dietary restriction on life history features and aging of the cricket Acheta domesticus

Abstract

Studying aging is constrained using vertebrates by their longevity, size, ethical restrictions, and expense. The key insect model, Drosophila melanogaster, is holometabolous. Larvae feed on yeast in moist media and adults sponge food. Most aging studies are restricted to adults. Another key model, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, feeds on bacteria in moist media. For either invertebrate refreshing test materials, preventing degradation and obtaining accurate dosing are difficult even with synthetic media. The cricket Acheta domesticus has a short lifespan (∼120 days at 30°C) and is omnivorous. Age-matched cohorts are easily obtained from eggs. The life cycle is hemimetabolous and nymphs eat the same foods as adults. Growth is easily monitored, gender can be differentiated before maturity, and maturation is indicated by wings and mature genitalia. Crickets can be reared in large numbers at low cost. Test materials can be mixed into food and ingestion rates or mass budgets easily assessed. Here, we validate the cricket as a model of aging by testing two fundamental methods of restricting food intake: time-restricted access to food and dietary dilution. Growth, maturation, survivorship, and longevity varied with treatments and genders. Intermittent feeding (which is ineffective in flies) significantly extended longevity of crickets. Dietary dilution also extended longevity via remarkable prolongation of the juvenile period.

Understanding the link between sexual selection, sexual conflict and aging using crickets as a model

“…This idea has been tested in crickets. Lyn et al (2011) achieved DR in house crickets (Acheta domesticus) by feeding animals intermittently or by diluting their diets with indigestible cellulose. Each treatment had sexspecific effects on survivorship but the greatest lifespan extension in the adult phase (1.77-fold) was seen in females.…”

“…Indeed, like fruit flies and nematodes, crickets are typically cheap and easy to rear in large numbers in the laboratory (Lyn et al, 2011), are short lived (Zajitschek et al, 2009c) and functional senescence can be easily assayed (e.g. Lailvaux et al, 2011).…”

“…However, crickets have additional attributes that are useful in aging research. It is easy to track the development of crickets through their instar stages and to determine sex prior to adulthood (Lyn et al, 2011). Compared to nematodes, the large size of crickets allows molecular or biochemical analyses to be performed on specific tissue types (Bailey et al, 2013).…”

The effect of dietary restriction on longevity, fecundity, and antioxidant responses in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) (Diptera: Tephritidae)

“…Dietary restriction (DR) extends lifespan across a vast diversity of organisms including vertebrates and invertebrates (Klass, 1977;Chapman and Partridge, 1996;Lin et al, 2000;Colman et al, 2009;Fontana et al, 2010), such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (Kimura et al, 1997;Dillin et al, 2002), the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (Clancy et al, 2001;Marden et al, 2003), the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) Ceratitis capitata (Davies et al, 2005), the Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni (Fanson and Taylor, 2011), the cricket Acheta domesticus (Lyn et al, 2011), and the mouse Mus musculus (Hursting et al, 1994;Harrison et al 2009). This taxonomic breadth suggests that the mechanism associating DR with aging is evolutionarily conserved (Partridge and Gems, 2002).…”

The influence of diet and environment on the gut microbial community of field crickets

“…The effect of diet on life history traits has been well documented, especially in the trade-offs between trait expressions due to differential allocation of limiting internal nutrients (Boggs & Ross, 1993;Cotter, Simpson, Raubenheimer, & Wilson, 2011;Kupferberg, Marks, & Power, 1994;Zera & Harshman, 2001). In recent years, crickets are emerging as a useful model organism for studying sexually selected traits and elucidating the effects of diet quality and composition on trade-offs between life history traits and sexual traits (Gray & Eckhardt, 2001;Harrison, Raubenheimer, Simpson, Godin, & Bertram, 2014;Kelly, Neyer, & Gress, 2014;Lyn, Naikkhwah, Aksenov, & Rollo, 2011;Maklakov et al, 2008;Simmons, 2011). But few studies have examined the impact of the gut microbiome on fitness in crickets.…”