Abstract
IF the authors of the recent report1 had chanced to include an insect physiologist among those consulted about the unusual objects detected by electron microscopy in an atmospheric aerosol, their quest would have been at an end ! These structures are brochosomes, bizarre excretory products of the Malpighian tubules of leaf hoppers (Homoptera; Jassidae). They were discovered on wing membranes and elsewhere on the surface of these insects by Tulloch, Shapiro and Cochrane2 and Wilde and Cochrane3, who named these structures to accord with their net-like form. Subsequently it was found4, by examination of thin sections in the electron microscope, that brochosomes are produced intracellularly in the urine-secreting tubules; their eventual distribution over the surface cuticle seems to be achieved by the insect manipulating the excreted pellets with its posterior pair of legs5.
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SMITH, D. “Airborne Organism” Identified. Nature 225, 199 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/225199c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/225199c0
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