Photomicrograph of sting apparatus components journal

Dufour's gland is an abdominal gland of certain

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s, part of the anatomy of the ovipositor or sting apparatus in female members of

Apocrita Apocrita is a suborder of insects in the order Hymenoptera. It includes wasps, bees, and ants, and consists of many families. It contains the most advanced hymenopterans and is distinguished from Symphyta by the narrow "waist" ( petiole) formed ...

. The diversification of Hymenoptera took place in the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

and the gland may have developed at about this time (200 million years ago) as it is present in all three groups of

, the

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...

s, bees and

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...

Structure

Dufour’s gland was first described by Léon Jean Marie Dufour in 1841. Along with the

spermatheca The spermatheca (pronounced plural: spermathecae ), also called receptaculum seminis (plural: receptacula seminis), is an organ of the female reproductive tract in insects, e.g. ants, bees, some molluscs, oligochaeta worms and certain other in ...

and the poison gland, it develops as an invagination of valves of the sternum. It empties at the base of the ovipositor in ants but into the dorsal vaginal wall in bees and wasps. The gland is lined by a single layer of

epithelial cells Epithelium or epithelial tissue is one of the four basic types of animal tissue, along with connective tissue, muscle tissue and nervous tissue. It is a thin, continuous, protective layer of compactly packed cells with a little intercell ...

which secrete substances into the hollow interior. Muscles round the opening of the duct may help control the outflow.

Function

The purpose of Dufour’s gland is to secrete chemicals, but the nature of the secretions and their function differs in various hymenopteran groups. The secretion is often used in

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

to mark members of the

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

, to mark hosts (parasitic wasps), during slave raids (ants), for territory marking (ants), to signal fertility, to attract a member of the opposite sex, to give an alarm warning (ants) or to mark a trail (ants). This use of scent marking pheromones secreted by Dufour's gland is observed in the carpenter bee '' Xylocopa pubescens'' to mark flowers and nests. Other functions include lubricating the valves of the ovipositor during egg-laying, serving as a component of material used to build the nest, serving as a food for the developing larvae and being mixed with pollen and nectar to provision the brood cell before egg-laying. For instance, the well developed Dufour's gland is one of the main physical characteristics of a social wasp '' Parischnogaster mellyi'', and the abundant abdominal secretion from the gland has been found to play an important role in egg development and oviposition. The gland is well-developed in various solitary mining bees where it is used to waterproof and make the lining of the brood cells fungus-resistant. Furthermore, the Dufour's gland of the parasitic '' Vespula austriaca'' wasp releases substances that prevent oogenesis in workers to suppress reproduction in host workers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dufour's gland Insect anatomy Arthropod glands Apocrita