Abstract
Aphids are phloem-feeding insects that successfully colonize specific host plant species. Aphid performance on a given plant is commonly measured by assessing fecundity of an aphid species that is adapted to the host. However, this approach may not reveal roles for plant genes in defense pathways that adapted aphids suppress. The host range of the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) is mostly restricted to plants of the legume family, and does not include Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Pea aphids die within a few days of being placed on Arabidopsis plants, and their survival therefore provides a sensitive measure of the status of the host plant defenses. This protocol describes how to measure the survival rate of the pea aphid on the non-host plant Arabidopsis. The protocol consists of two phases: first, obtaining a population of pea aphids of synchronized age; and secondly measuring their survival on Arabidopsis plants.
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Software
Procedure
Notes
Acknowledgments
We thank Andrew Davis for the photograph of the clip cage. This work was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant no. BB/J004553/1 to S. A. H.), the John Innes Foundation (to S. A. H.), a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council studentship (to D. C. P.) and a John Innes Foundation studentship (to T. R. V). This protocol is adapted from Reference 1 (Prince et al., 2014).
References
If you have any questions/comments about this protocol, you are highly recommended to post here. We will invite the authors of this protocol as well as some of its users to address your questions/comments. To make it easier for them to help you, you are encouraged to post your data including images for the troubleshooting.