Methodology of measuring and analyzing insect cold hardiness
Author of the article:OUYANG Fang GE Feng **
Author's Workplace：State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Key Words：cold hardiness, supercooling point, semilethal temperature, upper limit of chill injury zone, sum of injufious temperature
Abstract： The theoretical significance and practical value of insect cold hardiness is increasingly becoming an important part of current biology and ecology studies and the methodology of measuring and analyzing insect cold hardiness is one of the key issues in insect cryobiology. In this article, we first summarize ecological, physiological and biochemical strategies and mechanisms of cold hardiness in insects, then introduce the methodology of measurment and analysis of insect cold hardiness. We describe how to analyse the stress effects of low temperature on the survival of insect populations, such as survival rate, semilethal temperature, duration of exposure to low temperature, the upper limit of the chill injury zone and sum of injurious temperature. We also describe how to measure low temperature adaptive mechanisms of individual insects, for example, supercooling point, moisture content, energy substance, low-molecular-weight polyols and sugars and antifreeze proteins. In the future, research on low temperature biology will extend to the genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolic levels. From the macroscopic perspective, the relationships between quantitative dynamics, transfer behaviors and migration of overwintering populations and microclimate and regional landscape patterns are becoming increasingly clear. This will be conducive to a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the strategies and mechanisms of insect cold hardiness. This new information and knowledge coming from the genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolic levels to inform research on insect population ecology and landscape ecology will help establish a more systematic methodology for measuring and analyzing insect cold hardiness.