Glue characterization in centipedes

Chilopoda are a group of Myriapoda (Phylum Arthropoda) well known to produce highly painful and lethal venoms for hunting prey. Apart from this the animals use adhesive secretions as a defence strategy against predators such as ants and beetles. While in most geophilomorphic centipedes the secretions contain proteins and toxic components, in other species such as Henia vesuviana only proteins have been proven so far. The central objective of this proposed work is to study the morphology of the glue glands in three different centipede species, to characterize the glue chemically and on cellular level through transcriptome analyses and measure pyhsically the elastic properties of the cured glue. With this comparative study we aim to provide insights in the diversity of epithelial secretions in centipedes and thus understand the process of glue synthesis and secretion in arthropods as well as between other glue-producing animals.

Chilopoda are well known for their ability to capture a wide variety of prey, such as insects, spiders, amphibians and even mammals, using highly painful and lethal venoms for hunting.In addition, some species use a rapidly and strong hardening adhesive secretion as a defense strategy against predators such as beetles and ants. This secretions hardens within seconds and forms a hard, resin-like mass. In the present project, we compared for the first time the chemical composition of this defense secretion in four species from three families and characterized the glands on morphological and genetical level. In all species, the adhesive gland has the same morphological structure, differences are given in size and position of the glands in the segments. Instead, large differences in the glue composition on sugar and protein pattern exist on family level and even between related species. Most of the detected proteins are not yet in public protein databases, seem unique for this sample type and would need further in-depth characterization.