Original paper
Sodium influences dietary breadth of an insect herbivore
Wang, Xiao-Shuang; Yao, Ying; Liu, Xiang-Dong
Entomologia Generalis Volume 45 Number 2 (2025), p. 441 - 449
published: May 22, 2025
published online: Mar 27, 2025
manuscript accepted: Feb 10, 2025
manuscript revision received: Feb 2, 2025
manuscript revision requested: Nov 26, 2024
manuscript received: Sep 13, 2024
DOI: 10.1127/entomologia/2025/3013
ArtNo. ESP146004502012, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
Sodium is an essential micronutrient for herbivores, yet its role in influencing dietary breadth remains poorly understood. The cotton-melon aphid Aphis gossypii, a polyphagous species, provides an ideal model for exploring the mechanisms influencing dietary breadth, as its populations are divided into distinct host-specialized biotypes. Cotton-specialized aphids cannot use cucumber plants as a host, and conversely, cucumber-specialized aphid cannot utilize cotton. In this study, cotton-specialized aphids acquired the ability to use cucumber plants after feeding on a moderate-concentration sodium diet for five days. Sodium-rich diets proved attractive to aphids and significantly enhanced their growth rate, net reproductive rate, and intrinsic rate of natural increase. Additionally, feeding on a sodium diet markedly increased the activities of key detoxification enzymes, including glutathione S-transferase, carboxylesterase, and cytochrome P450. This suggests that sodium-enriched diets prime aphids’ detoxification systems, enabling them to alter their dietary range. These findings highlight sodium’s potential role in modulating herbivore dietary breadth and suggest that sodium availability in plants could influence the structure and dynamics of food webs in agricultural ecosystems.
Keywords
Aphis gossypii
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detoxification enzyme •
fitness •
host range •
preference •
salty food