The Drosophila ecdysone receptor promotes or suppresses proliferation according to ligand level

The Fat/Hippo pathway drives photoperiod-induced wing length polyphenism

“…morphogens) and extrinsic (hormones) factors act during development to regulate the final wing size of individuals (Tripathi and Irvine, 2022), where the plastic growth largely occurs through the endocrine axis of regulation (Mirth and Shingleton, 2019). In this system, insulin-like peptide (ILP) signaling canonically acts through the insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling (IIS) and target of rapamycin (Tor) pathways to adjust size in accordance to nutrient levels (Brogiolo et al ., 2001; Hietakangas and Cohen, 2009), whereas ecdysteroid signaling regulates both size and patterning (Gokhale et al ., 2016; Nogueira Alves et al ., 2022) by mediating the regulation of genes and pathways involved in wing morphogenesis (Herboso et al ., 2015; Parker and Struhl, 2020; Strassburger et al ., 2021; Perez-Mockus et al ., 2023). Notably, the regulatory function of these two hormones in insect wing development is conserved over considerable evolutionary distances (Herboso et al ., 2015; Nijhout and Callier, 2015; Nijhout, Laub and Grunert, 2018) and both have been shown to regulate morph determination in wing polyphenic species, as well as play a role in other polyphenisms (Rountree and Nijhout, 1995; Xu et al ., 2015; Vellichirammal et al ., 2017; Fawcett et al ., 2018; Nijhout and McKenna, 2018; Smýkal et al ., 2020; van der Burg et al ., 2020).…”