Diversity, function, and evolution of caterpillar attachment devices

在我的研究中，我的目标是结合基本的生理学、生态学和分子方法来研究生物体的进化。特别是，我想找出昆虫附着装置的发展限制，它们在植物表面的生物力学功能，以及它们的生态环境是如何塑造这些结构的进化的。我对鳞翅目幼虫特别感兴趣：尽管它们作为草食动物在世界范围内具有重要意义，但毛虫如何利用其异常多样化的前肢和丝线附着在宿主植物上的详细机制仍不清楚。我的目标是通过研究前腿功能和丝质利用如何与生态相关，前腿是如何在鳞翅目中进化的，并从发育遗传学中收集关于前腿和胸腿发育是否耦合的证据，来探索昆虫生物力学特征进化的制约因素和驱动因素。在食草动物和植物防御以及仿生的背景下，对毛虫附着机制的详细了解也很重要：了解植物-前腿相互作用的知识将有助于开发物理(不含杀虫剂)的作物防御方法，而毛虫丝是更多人了解的蜘蛛丝的附着专门化对应物。

In my research, I aim to combine basic physiological, ecological and molecular approaches to investigate the evolution of organisms. In particular, I would like to find out how developmental constraints for insect attachment devices, their biomechanical function on plant surfaces, and their ecological context have shaped the evolution of these structures. I have been particularly interested in the larvae of Lepidoptera: despite their worldwide importance as herbivores, the detailed mechanisms of how caterpillars attach to their host plants using their unusually diverse prolegs as well as silk threads are still unclear. I aim to explore the constraints and driving factors of insect biomechanical trait evolution by investigating how proleg function and silk use correlate with ecology, how prolegs have evolved across the Lepidoptera, and by gathering evidence from developmental genetics on whether proleg and thoracic leg development are coupled. A detailed understanding of caterpillar attachment mechanisms is also important in the context of herbivory and plant defences as well as biomimetics: knowledge of plant-proleg interactions will help to develop physical (pesticide-free) methods for crop defense while caterpillar silk represents an attachment-specialised counterpart to more well-understood spider silks.