2.1. Insect Materials and RNA Isolation

D. provosti larvae samples were collected in July 2019 from the lotus root N. nucifera located in the Sheyang Lake town, Baoying County, Yangzhou city, Jiangsu province (119.62 E, 33.32 N). The larvae samples length ranged from 8 mm to 12 mm. All D. provosti samples were freshly collected from the fields and frozen immediately at −80 °C before molecular analysis. Sequencing was performed on three independent biological replicates, and each replicate includes 5 individual larvae. The standard Trizol method was used to isolate total RNA, and the Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 system (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) was used to evaluate the integrity of all RNA samples.