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The Chemistry Of Lipid Signal Molecules In Insects, Sean M. Putnam

Department of Entomology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I report on the chemical identification of lipid signaling molecules in three species of insects and describe the chemical isolation of a bacterial product that inhibits eicosanoid biosynthesis. Chapter 2 reports that eicosanoids mediate nodulation reactions to bacterial infection in newly-emerged, but not forager honeybees. Cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase inhibitors attenuate nodulation, which is reversed in the presence of arachidonic acid. Older adult honeybees do not produce bacterial-induced nodules, and they have fewer circulating hemocytes, from which I infer that foraging honeybees express a physiological trade-off between maintaining a biologically expensive hemocytic immune system and flight activity associated with foraging. Chapters …