ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the choice of fuels available to flight muscles, the rationale for the selection of particular fuels, metabolism of the fuels, and aspects of the regulation of such metabolism. When locusts undergoing long-term tethered flight stop flying, the steady-state transport/ utilization of diacylglycerol is perturbed, resulting in a rapid elevation of hemolymph diacylglycerol because release from fat body continues for a period while utilization by muscle virtually ceases. Perfused flight muscle in vitro shows inhibition of trehalose utilization by added diacylglycerol-carrying lipoproteins. The major fuel reserves are stored at sites remote from the flight muscles and have to be mobilized, i.e., converted to transport forms, before they can be made available to the flight muscles. Different insect species show considerable differences in the amounts of fuels stored in the different forms, and the emphasis on fuel use can be very different even in closely related species.
