Neurogenesis in the median domain of the embryonic brain of the grasshopper Schistocerca gregaria.

Embryonic development in the median domain of the brain of the grasshopper Schistocerca gregaria was investigated with immunohistochemical, histological, and intracellular dye injection techniques. The early head midline is divisible into a dorsal median domain and a ventral median domain based on the orientation of cell somata in each region. At 25% of embryogenesis, a single large midline precursor differentiates in the dorsal median domain and produces a lineage of six neuronal progeny before degenerating. No further precursors arise. In addition, the primary commissure pioneers and a pair of lateral neurons differentiate directly from the ectoderm in this region. Lucifer yellow dye injected into the midline precursor stains only this cell and its progeny. Similarly, there is no dye coupling from the primary commissure pioneers to the midline lineage or to neuroblasts of the brain hemispheres. Neurogenesis in the dorsal median domain therefore proceeds separately within each subset of cells, and is not related to development in the brain hemispheres. Beginning at 42% of embryogenesis, the primary commissure pioneers undergo a morphological transformation and concomittantly express the Term-1 antigen. Expression continues throughout embryogenesis and into the adult, where the midline primary commissure pioneer cells are the only ones labeled by Term-1 in the entire brain. The cellular organization of the dorsal median domain therefore remains remarkably conserved throughout embryogenesis, even as the brain undergoes extensive morphological transformation.

Mechanosensory pegs constitute stridulatory files in grasshoppers.

Stridulatory files on the inner face of hindleg femora were shown to consist of mechanosensory pegs in males and females of Syrbula montezuma (Saussure) and in males of Chorthippus biguttulus (L.). Females of Chorthippus had stiff protuberances on their stridulatory files, with an innervated tubercle instead of pegs. Pegs and tubercles of adult grasshoppers were shown to develop from innervated tubercular hairs present from the first instar onward in Chorthippus. In adults of Chorthippus, two sensory cells innervated each peg of males and each tubercle of females. Central projections of these afferents from the stridulatory files were very similar to those of the neighboring tactile hairs on the femur. The afferents from pegs in Syrbula responded to deflection and pressure introduced via the widened cuticular cap. In both species, selective stimulation of femoral cuticular receptors elicited antagonistic reflex responses in a coxal retractor muscle: pegs inhibited and neighboring hairs raised the efferent tonic discharges. Apparently, in these two distantly related grasshopper species, stridulatory files function as both sound-producing and proprioceptive organs.