freeze tolerance
- Rapid cold hardening protects against sublethal freezing injury in an Antarctic insect
Summary: Rapid cold hardening has a well-established role in preventing death from cold; present data show it also protects against non-lethal freezing injury in a freeze-tolerant Antarctic insect.
- Insect fat body cell morphology and response to cold stress is modulated by acclimation
Highlighted Article: Freezing disrupts fat body cytoskeletal and lipid droplet structure, and acclimation lowers the temperature of this disruption. Survival may relate to cytoskeletal repair but not to lipid droplet morphology.
- Repeated freezing induces a trade-off between cryoprotection and egg production in the goldenrod gall fly, Eurosta solidaginis
Highlighted Article: In response to repeated freezing events, gall flies produce additional cryoprotectants at the expense of reproductive potential, suggesting that changes in thermal variability over winter will exacerbate the ecological impacts of climate change.
- Thermal analysis of ice and glass transitions in insects that do and do not survive freezing
Highlighted Article: Differential scanning calorimetry analysis of ice fraction dynamics in two drosophilid flies indicates a tight association between proline-induced vitrification and survival of cryopreservation in Chymomyza costata larvae.
- The many roles of fats in overwintering insects
Summary: We explore the evidence that insects subsist on fat overwinter, the consequences of subzero temperatures for fat metabolism, and some of the emerging functional roles of fat in overwintering insects.