Ray Ann M, Lacey Emerson S, Hanks Lawrence M
Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 320 Morrill Hall, 505 South Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Naturwissenschaften. 2006 Nov;93(11):543-50. doi: 10.1007/s00114-006-0142-x. Epub 2006 Aug 15.
Males of five species of three tribes in the longhorned beetle subfamily Cerambycinae produce volatile pheromones that share a structural motif (hydroxyl or carbonyl groups at carbons two and three in straight-chains of six, eight, or ten carbons). Pheromone gland pores are present on the prothoraces of males, but are absent in females, suggesting that male-specific gland pores could provide a convenient morphological indication that a species uses volatile pheromones. In this article, we assess the taxonomic distribution of gland pores within the Cerambycinae by examining males and females of 65 species in 24 tribes using scanning electron microscopy. Gland pores were present in males and absent in females of 49 species, but absent in both sexes of the remaining 16 species. Pores were confined to indentations in the cuticle. Among the species that had male-specific gland pores were four species already known to produce volatile compounds consistent with the structural motif. These findings support the initial assumption that gland pores are associated with the production of pheromones by males. There were apparently no taxonomic patterns in the presence of gland pores. These findings suggest that volatile pheromones play an important role in reproduction for many species of the Cerambycinae, and that the trait is evolutionarily labile.
天牛亚科三个族的五个物种的雄性会产生挥发性信息素，这些信息素具有一个共同的结构基序（在含有六个、八个或十个碳原子的直链中，第二个和第三个碳原子上带有羟基或羰基）。雄性的前胸上存在信息素腺孔，而雌性则没有，这表明雄性特有的腺孔可能提供了一个便利的形态学指标，用以表明一个物种是否使用挥发性信息素。在本文中，我们通过使用扫描电子显微镜检查24个族的65个物种的雄性和雌性，评估了天牛亚科内腺孔的分类分布情况。49个物种的雄性有腺孔而雌性没有，但其余16个物种的两性均没有腺孔。腺孔局限于表皮的凹陷处。在具有雄性特有的腺孔的物种中，有四个物种已知会产生与该结构基序一致的挥发性化合物。这些发现支持了最初的假设，即腺孔与雄性产生信息素有关。腺孔的存在显然没有分类学模式。这些发现表明，挥发性信息素在许多天牛亚科物种的繁殖中起着重要作用，并且该特征在进化上是不稳定的。
