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Fig. 3. Reconciling tubule physiology with phylogeny. Five species are represented;
the muscomorph flies Drosophila melanogaster and the tsetse fly
Glossina morsitans; the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and
Anopheles gambiae; and the more primitive orthopteran
Schistocerca gregaria. Some recent comparative results from our lab
are overlaid with classical data; the number of tubules per animal
(N=xx), the approximate number of cells per tubule (brown shading),
the presence of nitric oxide synthase in the tubule (NOS)
(Pollock et al., 2004), the
diuretic activity of Capa (CAPA) (Pollock
et al., 2004), the existence of a defined alkaline phosphatase
domain in the lower (proximal) tubule (ALP)
(Cabrero et al., 2004), the
presence of stellate cells (green stars)
(Cabrero et al., 2004) and the
haematophagous habit (red drops). The diagram shows that some properties can
be considered to be common to insects whereas others seem to be associated
with the Diptera. Conspicuously, tsetse flies, although closely related to
Drosophila, lack stellate cells: parsimony suggests this is a
secondary loss, perhaps associated with the degenerate lifestyle of these
unusual flies.
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