Fig. 4

Effect of juvenile hormone (JH) on ovarian development of M. vitrata. a Effect of decapitation and subsequent hormonal treatment on oocyte development. Decapitation was performed in teneral female adults soon after emergence (< 12 h). Hormones were injected into decapitated females in a concentration of 1 μg per female using a microsyringe. Three JHs (JH I, JH II, and JH III), farnesoic acid (FA), and 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) were assessed. Acetone (‘ACE’) was used as a control in decapitation treatment. ‘CON’ represents females without decapitation treatment. After 5 days at 25 °C, 10 females in each treatment were assessed for oocyte development. b Vitellogenin (Vg) production analysis using 10% SDS-PAGE. Hemolymph was collected from 5 days old females treated with different hormones. c Expression levels of Vg and VgR in adults treated with different hormones. Expression levels of these two genes were quantified by RT-qPCR in 5 days old females. All treatments were independently replicated three times. β-Actin expression was used as a reference in RT-qPCR to normalize target gene expression level. Different letters above standard deviation bars indicate significant difference among means at Type I error = 0.05 (LSD test)