New Molecular Perspectives in Crustacean Neuroendocrinology

Dear Colleagues,

With the expansion of the aquaculture production of crustaceans, there are still many challenges for its fast and sustainable development.  The bottleneck in the successful breeding of crustacean species is mainly due to the non-availability of information about reproductive biology, the life functions (e.g., endocrine, nutrition, immunity, heredity) involved in crustacean reproduction have become an area of focus. The past decade has seen an exponential increase in the availability of next-generation sequencing from multiple arthropod species, enabling a rapid rate of endocrine factor discovery, including ligands, their putative cognate receptors and their putative regulatory pathways.

While the sequences of endocrine factors are readily available in multiple Pancrustacea species, their functions remain elusive given their pleiotropic roles and lineage-specific family expansions, which leads to neofunctionalization across lineages. A key example includes the crustacean hyperglycemic hormone (CHH) superfamily of neuropeptides which is expanded in decapods. The CHH receptors are a longstanding key gap in our understanding. Insulin-like peptides (ILPs), as another example, have up to eight members in insects with yet unresolved functions for the most part. Over the past decade, a total of four ILPs were identified across decapods, only one of which was assigned a clear function.

This Special Issue intends to provide a timely and concise account of recent advances in crustacean endocrinology through the publication of high-quality articles with an emphasis on diverse crustacean species, including Decapoda, Amphipoda, Isopoda, Copepoda and Cladocera, among others, to advance our knowledge of neuroendocrine and endocrine regulation in insects and crustaceans

Dr. Tomer Ventura
Guest Editor

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