Wing dimorphism, that is, wingless and winged forms, can be induced by maternal stress signals and is an adaptive response of aphids to environmental changes. Here, we investigated the ecological and molecular effects of three kinds of stress, namely crowding, predation, and aphid alarm pheromone, on wing dimorphism. These three stressors induced high proportion of up to 60% of winged morphs in offspring. Transcriptome analysis of stress‐treated female aphids revealed different changes in maternal gene expression induced by the three stressors. Crowding elicited widespread changes in the expression of genes involved in nutrient accumulation and energy mobilization. Distinct from crowding, predation caused dramatic expression changes in cuticle protein (CP) genes. Twenty‐three CP genes that belong to CP RR2 subfamily and are highly expressed in legs and embryos were greatly repressed by the presence of ladybird. By contrast, application of alarm pheromone, E‐β‐farnesene, caused slight changes in gene expression. The three factors shared a responsive gene, cuticle protein 43. This study reveals the adaptive response of aphids to environmental stresses and provides a rich resource on genome‐wide expression genes for exploring molecular mechanisms of ecological adaptation in aphids.OPEN RESEARCH BADGES: This article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.55b2b15.

Urbanization has been shown to influence the composition and diversity of soil microbial communities. However, the functional response of the soil microbial community to urbanization is not well studied. In this study, we used the Biolog Microplates method to characterize microbial catabolic profiles in Eucalyptus plantations of soil samples from urban, suburban and rural sites in Guangzhou, China. The results showed that there were significant differences in the average well-color development (AWCD) of all carbon sources among the three urban–rural plantations microbial communities, and the Simpson functional diversity index showed significant differences. Soil microbial metabolic activity showed a significantly negative correlation with soil variables (pH, total nitrogen, available Cu, available Zn, total Pb, total Cr and total Cd) except bulk density and organic carbon. Additionally, the three urban–rural plantations microbial communities differed significantly in the metabolic utilization of carbohydrates, phenols, amino acids and amines, however there were no significant differences in the carboxylic acids and polymers. Furthermore, the principal component analysis revealed that the microbial communities of three urban–rural plantations had obviously different metabolic functions. These results revealed that urbanization distinctly decreased soil microbial activities and affected soil microbial function.

Chlorophytum comosum is a perennial ornamental plant in the family Liliaceae, it is also a valuable medicinal plant. To enrich the genetic resources of C. comosum, its chloroplast genome was determined by Illumina sequencing data. The chloroplast genome is a typical quadripartite structure with a size of 153,983 bp, of which the LSC region is 83,471 bp, the SSC region is 18,010 bp, and the pair of IR regions is 26,251 bp. The overall GC content is 37%. It contains 131 genes, including 85 protein-coding genes, 38 tRNA genes, and 8 rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analyses showed that C. comosum is closely related to Chlorophytum rhizopendulum. However, it can be distinguished from other plants. This study enriches the sequence resources of C. comosum and provides important data for the development of molecular identification markers.

Hong Kong oysters (Crassostrea hongkongensis) are an important marine bivalve with nutritional and commercial value. The expanded off-bottom farming scale in recent years makes the oysters more susceptible to exposure to abiotic stresses, such as salinity stress, an important environmental factor that has been proven to have significant effects on oyster growth and development. However, the molecular mechanism is still unclear. Cyclin E is an important protein in the process of cell cycle regulation that is indispensable for propelling G1/S phase transition in a dose-dependent manner. In order to investigate whether the salinity stress affects cyclin E expression in oysters, the cDNA sequence of C. hongkongensis cyclin E (Ch-CCNE) was isolated from a gill cDNA library, and the 2.8 kbp length cDNA fragment contained a complete open reading frame (ORF) encoding 440 amino acid residues. Ch-CCNE mRNA was highly expressed in the gonad and low in the adductor mussel, mantle, gill, labial palp, and digestive gland. The recombinant CCNE protein was expressed and purified in a pET32a(+)-CCNE/Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) system via IPTG induction and was used for generating mice anti-Ch-CCNE antiserums. Western blot analysis showed that the CCNE protein in the gill was maintained at low expression levels under either hypo- (5 ppt) or hyper- (35 ppt) salinity, and could be produced at high levels under appropriate salinity during a 10-day exposure period. The immuno-localization indicated that the Ch-CCNE protein was distributed in the nucleus. These results suggested that either hypo- or hyper-salinity stress could inhibit the CCNE expression of Hong Kong oysters and their negative impact on cell division and proliferation.