Tadashi Shinohara

Shizuoka University · Department of Biological Science, Faculty of Science

The three-dimensional morphologies of insects, such as spines and horns, have recently garnered attention as an effective system for elucidating the processes underlying dramatic changes in external morphology. Adult leaf beetles of Dactylispa Weise 1897 exhibit sharp spines on their pronotum and elytra, while their pupae lack such features. In ord...

Holometabolous insects dramatically change their morphology via molt, both from larva to pupa and from pupa to adult. In nonmodel insects, RNA interference (RNAi) is a strong tool for analyzing gene function during postembryonic development. In many cases, larval RNAi is effective for analyzing genes involved in morphogenesis via metamorphosis. How...

The timing and frequency of female mating are important determinants of male reproductive success. Elucidating reproductive phenology is crucial to understand the evolution of mating behaviour and mating systems. Mate encounter rate is a key variable for understanding the evolutionary consequences of sexual cannibalism. However, remarkably little i...

Insects represent the biodiversity of the terrestrial ecosystem, and their prosperity is attributable to their association with symbiotic microorganisms. By sequestering microbial functionality into their bodies, organs, tissues, or cells, diverse insects have successfully exploited otherwise inaccessible ecological niches and resources, including...

The prey preference of a predator can impose natural selection on prey phenotypes, including body size. Despite evidence that large body size protects against predation in insects, the determinants of body size variation in Cassidinae leaf beetles are not well understood. We examined the prey preference of the digger wasp Cerceris albofasciata, a s...

Ecological character displacement predicts that interspecific resource competition results in greater trait divergence between species in sympatry than in allopatry. However, other processes, such as ecological sorting, result in the same pattern of trait variation. In this study, we characterize character displacement in eight species of snail-fee...

Predator–prey interactions may be responsible for enormous morphological diversity in prey species. We performed predation experiments with morphological manipulations (ablation) to investigate the defensive function of dorsal spines and explanate margins in Cassidinae leaf beetles against three types of predators: assassin bugs (stinger), crab spi...

Leaf beetles of the subfamily Cassidinae Gyllenhal, 1813 (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) exhibit various external morphologies in all life stages, and these may be anti-predator adaptations. We revealed the predator-prey relationship between Cassidinae and their specific predator Cerceris albofasciata (Rossi, 1790) (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae: Philanthin...

Celes akitanus (Shiraki, 1910) was rediscovered at the semi-natural grasslands in Japan. This species is one of the most endangered insects in Japan; most local populations were thought to be extinct. Reliable records of this rare species had been obtained only from Yamagata, Niigata, Tokyo, and Nagano prefectures. We compared the morphology of the...