Insect pheromone research: some history and 45 years of personal recollections

Since when have men known of chemical communication? The essay will begin with a speculation on a possible "prehistoric" scene when early human hunters observed animals. This will lead directly to a more than 300-year-old description of a rather modern experiment with dogs. From here we come to the situation about 120 years ago, when sexual attraction of male moths by their females was described. Even the use of female moths for trapping pest species males was already considered 100 years ago. The so far final development began in the 1950s with the chemical identification of the sexual attractant of the silkmoth Bombyx. Such substances were then named pheromones and bombykol, the sexual attractant of the female silkmoth, was the first pheromone (1959). With chemically pure pheromones and their derivatives available, corresponding physiological studies began in this period and led to the knowledge of the sensory specificity, sensitivity and adaptation of receptor cells and eventually of stimulus-induced behavior. During the following decades, many insect attractants were identified and their application in "integrated pest control measures" is well developed. Important physiological, microanatomical and biochemical investigations were still more recently done. Even the processing of pheromone information in a special area of the olfactory brain of moths and cockroaches, and the anemotactic orientation which is elicited by pheromone odor, are now widely understood. The complex biochemical mechanisms of sensory transduction, however, are not yet fully clarified and no receptor molecule was identified until now.