Liu Zhudong, Xu Bingbing, Miao Zhenwang, Sun Jianghua
State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beichen West Road 1-5, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China.
Chem Senses. 2013 Jul;38(6):485-95. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjt019. Epub 2013 Apr 29.
The red turpentine beetle, Dendroctonus valens LeConte, is one of the most destructive invasive forest pests in China, having killed more than 6 million pines since its first outbreak in 1999. Little is known about D. valens pheromone biology and no aggregation pheromone has yet been identified. Analysis by gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer of volatiles collected from live beetles in China showed that female beetles produce frontalin and males do not. Olfactory assays in the laboratory showed that males were attracted to frontalin at a wide range of concentrations, whereas females were attracted to it at a narrow range of concentrations. In field trials, 3-carene, a monoterpene kairomone from a pine tree selected to host the beetles attracted both sexes, and when frontalin was added, the total number of beetles captured increased by almost 200%. However, increasing concentrations of frontalin significantly decreased the percentage of female beetles trapped. These results suggest a new role of frontalin as an aggregation pheromone in addition to a female-produced sex pheromone, which was previously shown in a North American population. The dual functions of the pheromone frontalin produced by D. valens females, as well as its ecological significance for overcoming host resistance, are discussed.
红脂大小蠹（Dendroctonus valens LeConte）是中国最具破坏性的入侵性森林害虫之一，自1999年首次爆发以来，已导致600多万棵松树死亡。人们对红脂大小蠹的信息素生物学知之甚少，尚未鉴定出其聚集信息素。对从中国活体甲虫收集的挥发物进行气相色谱/质谱分析表明，雌虫产生frontalin，而雄虫不产生。实验室嗅觉试验表明，雄虫在很宽的浓度范围内被frontalin吸引，而雌虫只在很窄的浓度范围内被吸引。在田间试验中，3-蒈烯，一种来自被选为甲虫寄主的松树的单萜类利它素，对两性都有吸引力，当添加frontalin时，捕获的甲虫总数增加了近200%。然而，frontalin浓度的增加显著降低了诱捕到的雌虫比例。这些结果表明，frontalin除了是一种由雌虫产生的性信息素外，还具有作为聚集信息素的新作用，这一作用先前在北美种群中已得到证实。本文讨论了红脂大小蠹雌虫产生的信息素frontalin的双重功能及其克服寄主抗性的生态意义。
