Content of lectures: 1. Introduction: Insect characteristics and importance, review of hemimetabolic orders. 2.Review of holometabolic orders, insect evolution, classification, and biodiversity. 3.Embryogenesis: cleavage, gastrulation and organogenesis, maternal determinants and gene expression cascade, regulatory and mosaic eggs, compartments. Polyembryony. 4.Postembryonic development (types of larvae and pupae, growth, allometry, polyploidy and polyteny, metamorphosis). Integument and moulting. 5.Reproduction and senescence: types of ovaries, oogenesis and spermiogenesis, egg formation, maiting and egg laying, parthenogenesis, transovarial infections, polydnavirus particles. Egg structure, fertilization, germ line cells. 6.Nervous system and sensory organs: structural and functional features, neuroamines. 7.Neuroendocrine system: neurosecretory cells, neurohormones and brain/gut peptides, neurohaemal organs, the action mechanism of peptidic hormones. 8.Endocrine glands and their hormones: corpora cardiaca, corpora allata, prothoracic glands, gonads, others, mode of action of steroid-type hormones. 9.Hormonal regulations: larval development, metamorphosis, reproduction, embryogenesis. 10. Diapause: Induction and termination, different diapause syndromes, endogenous regulatory mechanisms. 11. Immune reactions: wound healing, regeneration, transdetermination, defense against pathogens, cellular and humoral immune reactions. 12. Life cycles: temperature and other thresholds, stress and aclimation, alternative developmental pathways. 13. Inheritance and environment: gene maping, sex determination, genotypic and phenotypic polymorphism. Content of practicals: 1.Practical excercise in recognizing insect orders, with emaphasis on the model species used in research. 2.Field trip to view arthropod communities in terrestrial ecosystems (forest and maize field) and in a fresh water pool.
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B. S. Heming (2003) Insect Development and Evolution. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, USA, 444 str..
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V.H. Resh a R.T. Cardé, eds. (2003) Encyclopedia of Insects. Academic Press, San Diego, USA, 1266 str..
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