Rearing, dissection, and temporal transcriptomic profiling protocols to study density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in Schistocerca (Insecta: Orthoptera)
This protocol generates gregarious and solitarious density-dependent phenotypes in multiple Schistocerca species under controlled environmental conditions. It describes cage setup, feeding, animal handling, and sterile dissection workflows to isolate nervous, chemosensory, gut, fat body, and female reproductive tissues from nymphs and adults. It emphasizes rapid tissue stabilization and RNase-control practices for downstream single-tissue DNA and RNA analyses. Graphical abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=136 SRC="FIGDIR/small/705994v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (43K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@59afdaorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@283b72org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@156fa13org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@13bf71b_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG