Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS), Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.
Laboratoire d'Entomologie Fondamentale et Appliquée (LEFA), Unité de Formation et de Recherche - Sciences de la Vie et de la Terre (UFR-SVT), University Joseph KI-ZERBO, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2022 Nov;6(11):1676-1686. doi: 10.1038/s41559-022-01869-x. Epub 2022 Sep 15.
Cues involved in mate seeking and recognition prevent hybridization and can be involved in speciation processes. In malaria mosquitoes, females of the two sibling species Anopheles gambiae s.s. and An. coluzzii mate in monospecific male swarms and hybrids are rare. Long-range sex pheromones driving this behaviour have been debated in literature but so far, no study has proven their existence or their absence. Here, we attempted to bring to light their existence. To put all the odds in our favour, we used different chemical ecology methods such as behavioural and electrophysiological assays as well chemical analyses, and we worked with mosquitoes at their optimal physiological mating state that is with swarming males during their natural swarming windows. Despite all our efforts, our results support the absence of long-range sex pheromones involved in swarm detection and recognition by females. We briefly discuss the implications of this finding in ecology, evolution and for control strategies.
求偶和识别线索可防止杂交并参与物种形成过程。在疟蚊中，两个近缘种冈比亚按蚊 s.s. 和 An. coluzzii 的雌性在单一种群的雄性群中交配，杂种很少见。在文献中，人们一直在争论驱动这种行为的长距离性信息素，但到目前为止，还没有研究证明它们的存在或不存在。在这里，我们试图揭示它们的存在。为了使所有的可能性都对我们有利，我们使用了不同的化学生态学方法，如行为和电生理测定以及化学分析，并在最佳生理交配状态下使用蚊子，即在其自然交配窗口期间与正在聚集的雄性一起。尽管我们做了很多努力，但我们的结果支持不存在长距离性信息素参与雌性对聚集的检测和识别。我们简要讨论了这一发现对生态学、进化和控制策略的影响。
