Anastrepha
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Diptera
- Family: Tephritidae
- Genus: Anastrepha
Visual Description
Members of the genus Anastrepha are fruit flies characterized by distinct wing patterns, often featuring brown or yellowish-brown bands that form characteristic shapes across the wing surface.[1] The body typically exhibits a yellowish to brownish coloration, and the abdomen is often slender, with females possessing a prominent, elongated ovipositor sheath.[1]
Biology and Genetics
The genus Anastrepha is a significant group within the family Tephritidae. Research into the transformer (tra) gene in Anastrepha has revealed that it functions as a memory device for sex determination. This mechanism utilizes an auto-regulatory process where functional Tra protein is produced exclusively in females.[2]
This sex-determination mechanism is considered ancestral, likely present in the common ancestor of the Anastrepha, Ceratitis, and Bactrocera lineages, representing an ancestral state compared to the cascade observed in Drosophila.[2] The Tra-Tra2 complex in Anastrepha acts as a splicing activator for doublesex (dsx), promoting female-specific exon inclusion, and as a splicing inhibitor for tra itself, preventing male-specific exon inclusion.[2]
Gallery
References
- 1 2 3 Dataset view for Animalia / Arthropoda / Insecta / Diptera / Tephritidae / Anastrepha constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 3 María Fernanda Ruiz; Andreina Milano; Marco Salvemini; José M. Eirín‐López; A L P Perondini; Denise Selivon; Catello Polito; Giuseppe Saccone; Lucas Sánchez. The Gene Transformer of Anastrepha Fruit Flies (Diptera, Tephritidae) and Its Evolution in Insects. PLoS ONE. 2007. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001239.