In the phytophagous corn earworm, Helicoverpa (Heliothis) zea, females delay their reproductive behaviors until they find a suitable host on which to deposit their eggs. Perception of volatile chemical signals from corn silk triggers the production of sex pheromone followed by its release, which leads to mating. Several natural corn silk volatiles, including the plant hormone ethylene, induced ...

Animals using odor plumes to locate resources are activated to track these plumes by the presence of an attractive odor, and typically steer toward the source using directional cues from the flowing air or water bearing the odor. We challenged freely walking virgin male cockroaches, Periplaneta americana, to track plumes of airborne female pheromone and then video-recorded and analyzed their re...

Telesensing, or probing of the environment by the release of chemical messengers, plays a central role in the sexual programs of microbial organisms. Sex pheromones secreted by mating cells are sensed by potential partner cells and mediate cell-to-cell contact and the subsequent exchange of genetic material. Although the mechanisms used by bacterial and fungal species to promote genetic exchang...

The previously identified female sex pheromone of cocoa pod borer, Conopomorpha cramerella, was re-evaluated for its attractive activity in different field conditions. It was found that lures containing 100-mug of synthetic sex pheromone blend, (E,Z,Z)- and (E,E,Z)-4,6,10-hexadecatrienyl acetates, and the corresponding alcohols in a ratio of 40:60:4:6 in a polyethylene vial attracted male C. cr...

The pheromone biosynthetic pathway for production of the sex pheromone disparlure, 2-methyl-7R,8S-epoxy-octadecane, was determined for the gypsy moth. Each step in the pathway was followed by using deuterium-labeled compounds that could be identified by using GCMS. This approach provides unequivocal determination of specific reactions in the pathway. It was shown that the alkene precursor, 2-me...

BACKGROUND Members of the subfamily Galleriinae have adapted to different selective environmental pressures by devising a unique mating process. Galleriinae males initiate mating by attracting females with either chemical or acoustic signals (or a combination of both modalities). Six compounds considered candidates for the sex pheromone have recently been identified in the wing gland extracts o...

In field observations and laboratory experiments, we found that virgin females of the solitary parasitoid Aphelinus asychis did not emit a volatile sex pheromone to attract males, contrary to what has been reported in many other parasitoid species. Instead, we found that virgin females deposited a sex pheromone on the substrate to which males responded by intensively searching on and near the m...

27 Social pollinators such as honey bees face attacks from predators not only at the nest, but also during 28 foraging. Pollinating honey bees can therefore release alarm pheromones that deter conspecifics from visiting 29 dangerous inflorescences. However, the effect of alarm pheromone and its chemical components upon bee 30 avoidance of dangerous food sources remains unclear. We tested the re...

Conjugation-regulating pheromones were analyzed in homothallic Closterium for the first time. Members of the Closterium peracerosum-strigosum-littorale complex are unicellular charophycean algae in which there are two modes of zygospore formation: heterothallism and homothallism. A homothallic strain of Closterium (designation, kodama20) forms selfing zygospores via the conjugation of two siste...