Divergent nucleic acid allocation in juvenile insects of different metamorphosis modes Villar Argáiz, Manuel López Rodríguez, Manuel Jesús Tierno De Figueroa, José Manuel This work was funded by the Regional Government of Andalusia (Excelencia P12-RNM327 Project to MVA). We thank J. M. Medina-Sánchez, J. M. Olalla, J. M. Luzón-Ortega, and I. López Lozano for their help in field sampling. S. Hitos is acknowledged for her contribution on laboratory analyses, J. M. Conde and R. Rubio de Casas for their helpful suggestions for data treatment, I. Peralta-Maraver for drawings of figure 4, and R. Davies for English writing assistance. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi. org/10.1038/s41598-021-89736-w. Nucleic acids help clarify variation in species richness of insects having different metamorphosis modes, a biological conundrum. Here we analyse nucleic acid contents of 639 specimens of aquatic insects collected from four high mountain streams of Sierra Nevada in southern Spain to test whether the allocation to RNA or DNA content differs during ontogeny between juvenile insects undergoing direct (hemimetabolous) or indirect (holometabolous) metamorphosis. The results show that RNA content as a function of body mass was negatively correlated to insect body length in four out of six and three out of six of the holometabolan and hemimetabolan taxa, respectively. Although no significant differences in RNA content were found between holometabolans and hemimetabolans, the significant interaction between body length and metamorphosis mode for RNA and RNA:DNA indicates a strong ontogenetic component to RNA allocation. In addition, our finding of lower DNA content in holometabolans relative to hemimetabolans agree with the analysis of empirical genome data in aquatic and terrestrial insects, and extend to this class of arthropods the “growth rate-genome size-nutrient limitation” hypothesis that differences in allocation between RNA and DNA may reflect fundamental evolutionary trade-off of life-history strategies associated with high growth rates (and RNA content) in holometabolans at the expense of diminished genome sizes. 2021-06-01T07:35:55Z 2021-06-01T07:35:55Z 2021-05-13 journal article Villar-Argaiz, M., López-Rodríguez, M.J. & Tierno de Figueroa , J.M. Divergent nucleic acid allocation in juvenile insects of different metamorphosis modes. Sci Rep 11, 10313 (2021). [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89736-w] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/68953 10.1038/s41598-021-89736-w eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España Springer Nature