Morphological and Transcriptomic Analysis of a Beetle Chemosensory System Reveals a Gnathal Olfactory Center.

Background: The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum is an emerging insect model organism representing the largest insect order, Coleoptera, which encompasses several serious agricultural and forest pests. Despite the ecological and economic importance of beetles, most insect olfaction studies have so far focused on dipteran, lepidopteran, or hymenopteran systems.

Results: Here, we present the first detailed morphological description of a coleopteran olfactory pathway in combination with genome-wide expression analysis of the relevant gene families involved in chemoreception.