Scaled Insects

Bacteriome in armored scale insects, females are diploid while the males are haploid. When it is time to reproduce one set of chromosomes has to be silenced or destroyed. There is an organ called the bacteriome. The bacteriome does not have the same number of chromosomes present compared to the rest of the insect’s body. In order to find out why the bacteriome does not have the same number of chromosomes, fluorescent imaging was used to visualize where the chromosomes are at all times. It is found that there is doubling of the DNA in the nucleus and that the cells are mostly in a diploid state throughout its life. Which was found predominately in females. There were three times the number of diploid cells found compared to haploid cells in males. Thus, the populations are dominantly female. The reason for the lower number of bacteriome chromosomes present in the insects is because bacteriome does not make up a large number of the body’s cells.