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. 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.
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.
- ↑ 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.