3 replies to this topic

[HanaNa]

Hi,

 

I need to write an essay on milk production in invertebrates. I was wondering if anyone could highlight me to a place where I can either find this information?

 

 

[Astilius]

Milk production in invertebrates?   Unless I'm missing something I think someone's playing a joke.

[hobglobin]

Well tsetse flies and cockroach are the classic examples of insects where you find something like "milk" (at least in some genera), surely some other orders too.

http://www.sciencedi...040816674900093

https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC4453834/

 

If it's really "milk", is surely a matter of definition or naming...but composition and purpose is similar to mammal milk (as in crop milk of some bird speces etc). Nutritive fluid would be more general but tells the same.

Question is how detailed and profound the essay has to be. Wikipedia or entomology textbook or scientific papers/reviews?

[Astilius]

Interesting.

I do think that calling it milk is silly, however.   Milk is universally defined as a secretion of mammary glands in mammals.   To define other secretions as such undermines standard definitions (which is unwise).   So, while I take the point that "Nutritive fluid would be more general" it doesn't "tell the same" at all.

 

Interesting, though.