ASSIGNMENT

Course: Entomology

Submitted to: Dr. Amaninder Kaur

Submitted by: Charudutt Poonia

Alimentary Canal Of Insect

All insects have a complete digestive system. This means that

food processing occurs within a tube-like enclosure,
the alimentary canal, running lengthwise through the body
from mouth to anus.
In most insects, the alimentary canal is subdivided into three
functional regions: foregut (stomodeum), midgut (mesenteron),
and hindgut (proctodeum).

Stomodaeum:
An insect’s mouth, located centrally at the base of the
mouthparts, is a muscular valve (sphincter) that marks the
“front” of the foregut. Food in the buccal cavity is sucked
through the mouth opening and into the pharynx by the action
of cibarial muscles. These muscles are located between the
head capsule and the anterior wall of the pharynx. When they
contract, they create suction by enlarging the volume of the
pharynx (like opening a bellows). This “suction pump”
mechanism is called the cibarial pump. It is especially
well-developed in insects with piercing/sucking mouth parts.
From the pharynx, food passes into the esophagus by means of
peristalsis (rhythmic muscular contractions of the gut wall). The
esophagus is just a simple tube that connects the pharynx to
the crop, a food-storage organ.
Food remains in the crop until it can be processed through the
remaining sections of the alimentary canal. While in the crop,
some digestion may occur as a result of salivary enzymes that
were added in the buccal cavity and/or other enzymes
regurgitated from the midgut. In some insects, the crop opens
posteriorly into a muscular proventriculus. This organ contains
tooth-like denticles that grind and pulverize food particles.
The proventriculus serves much the same function as a gizzard
in birds. The stomodeal valve, a sphincter muscle located just
behind the proventriculus, regulates the flow of food from the
stomodeum to the mesenteron.

Mesenteron:
The midgut begins just past the stomodeal valve. Near its
anterior end, finger-like projections (usually from 2 to 10)
diverge from the walls of the midgut. These structures, the
gastric caecae, provide extra surface area for secretion of
enzymes or absorption of water from the alimentary canal. The
rest of the midgut is called the ventriculus, it is the primary site
for enzymatic digestion of food and absorption of nutrients.
Digestive cells lining the walls of the ventriculus have
microscopic projections (microvilli) that increase surface area
for nutrient absorption.
Proctodaeum:
The pyloric valve serves as a point of origin for dozens to
hundreds of Malpighian tubules. These long, spaghetti-like
structures extend throughout most of the abdominal cavity
where they serve as excretory organs, removing nitrogenous
wastes (principally ammonium ions, NH4+) from the
hemolymph. The toxic NH4+ is quickly converted to urea and
then to uric acid by a series of chemical reactions within the
Malpighian tubules. The uric acid, a semi-solid, accumulates
inside each tubule and is eventually emptied into the hindgut
for elimination as part of the fecal pellet.
Insect Circulatory System different from
Mammal

Unlike the closed circulatory system found in mammals, Insects

have an open system lacking arteries and veins.
Insects, like all other arthropods, have an open circulatory
system which differs in both structure and function from
the closed circulatory system found in mammals. In a closed
system, blood is always contained within vessels (arteries, veins,
capillaries, or the heart itself). In an open system, blood
(usually called hemolymph) spends much of its time flowing
freely within body cavities where it makes direct contact with
all internal tissues and organs. The hemolymph thus flows
freely throughout their bodies, lubricating tissues and
transporting nutrients and wastes. Whereas the mammal
circulatory system serves primarily to carry oxygen throughout
the body, insects respire an entirely different way namely,
through tracheal tubes. In the case of the fruit
fly Drosophila, for example, a series of tiny openings called
spiracles line the impermeable outer skin of the fly, and these
convey air directly to tracheal tubes that, in turn, convey air to
the internal tissues.

Insects do have hearts that pump the hemolymph throughout

their circulatory systems. Though these hearts are quite
different from vertebrate hearts, some of the genes that direct
heart development in the two groups are in fact very similar.

The major difference between insect blood and the blood of

mammals, is that vertebrate blood contains red blood cells.
Insects and other invertebrates, on the other hand, have what
is called hemolymph, heterogeneous fluid that courses through
their bodies, bathing all the internal tissues. Hemolymph is
mostly water, but it also contains ions, carbohydrates, lipids,
glycerol, amino acids, hormones, some cells and pigments. The
pigments, however, are usually rather bland, and thus insect
blood is clear or tinged with yellow or green.

Venation In Insect
Venation is the name given to the arrangement (number and
position) of veins within an insect's wing. Entomologists study
the venation of wings and this is often used as a way of
differentiating between otherwise similar species.
In early insects the veins running down the wing (longitudinal
veins) were connected by a series of cross veins. Most insect
groups have lost, or dramatically reduced the number of, these
cross veins. However, some insects such as dragonflies and
damselflies have wings that contain many cross veins.
The archedictyon is the name given to a hypothetical scheme of
wing venation proposed for the very first winged insect. It is
based on a combination of speculation and fossil data. Since all
winged insects are believed to have evolved from a common
ancestor, the archediction represents the "template" that has
been modified (and streamlined) by natural selection for 200
million years. According to current dogma, the archedictyon
contained 6-8 longitudinal veins. These veins (and their
branches) are named according to a system devised by John
Comstock and George Needham, the Comstock-Needham
System:
The costa (C) is the leading marginal vein on most insects.
Sometimes, there is a small vein above the costa called the
precosta, although in almost all extant insects,the precosta is
fused with the costa. The costa rarely ever branches because it
is at the leading edge, which is associated at its base with the
humeral plate. The trachea of the costal vein is perhaps a
branch of the subcostal trachea. Located after the costa is the
third vein, the subcosta, which branches into two separate
veins: the anterior and posterior. The base of the subcosta is
associated with the distal end of the neck of the first axillary
(see section below). The fourth vein is the radius (R), which is
branched into five separate veins. The radius is generally the
strongest vein of the wing. Toward the middle of the wing, it
forks into a first undivided branch (R1) and a second branch,
called the radial sector (Ra), which subdivides dichotomously
into four distal branches (R2, R3, R4, R5).

Names of crossveins are based on their position relative to

longitudinal veins:
c-sc: crossveins run between the costa and subcosta
r: crossveins run between adjacent branches of the radius
r-m: crossveins run between the radius and media
m-cu: crossveins run between the media and cubitus

All the veins of the wing are subject to secondary forking and to
union by cross-veins. In some orders of insects the cross-veins
are so numerous that the whole venational pattern becomes a
close network of branching veins and cross-veins. Ordinarily,
however, there is a definite number of cross-veins having
specific locations. The more constant cross-veins are the
humeral cross-vein (h) between costa and subcosta, the radial
cross-vein (r) between R and the first fork of Rs, the sectorial
cross-vein (s) between the two forks of R8, the median
cross-vein (m–m) between M2 and M3, and the mediocubital
cross-vein (m-cu) between media and cubitus.
The veins of insect wings are characterized by convex-concave
placement, the costa and subcosta are regarded as convex and
concave branches of a primary first vein, Rs is the concave
branch of the radius, posterior media the concave branch of
the media, Cu1 and Cu2 are respectively convex and concave,
while the primitive Postcubitus and the first vannal have each
an anterior convex branch and a posterior concave branch.