Insect pheromones
Neurotransmitters used by insects / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Insect pheromones are neurotransmitters that serve the chemical communication between individuals of an insect species. They thus differ from kairomones, in other words, neurotransmitters that transmit information to non-species organisms. Insects produce pheromones in special glands and release them into the environment. In the pheromone receptors of the sensory cells of the recipient, they produce a nerve stimulus even in very low concentrations, which ultimately leads to a behavioral response. Intraspecific communication of insects via these substances takes place in a variety of ways and serves, among other things, to find sexual partner, to maintain harmony in a colony of socially living insects, to mark territories or to find nest sites and food sources.
In 1959, the German biochemist and Nobel Prize winner Adolf Butenandt identified and synthesized the unsaturated fatty alcohol bombycol, the sex pheromone of the domestic silk moth (Bombyx mori), as the first known insect pheromone. The sex pheromones of female butterflies are mostly mono- or bis-olefinic fatty acids or their esters, fatty alcohols, their esters or the corresponding aldehydes. Male butterflies use a wide range of chemicals as sex pheromones, for example pyrrolizidine alkaloids, terpenes and aromatic compounds such as benzaldehyde.
Research into the chemical communication of insects is expanding our understanding of how they locate their food sources or places to lay eggs. For example, beekeepers use an artificially produced Nasanov pheromone containing terpenes such as geraniol and citral to attract bees to an unused hive. The agriculture and forestry industries use insect pheromones commercially in pest control using insect traps to prevent egg laying and in practicing the mating disruption. It is expected that insect pheromones can also contribute in this way to the control of insect-borne infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever or African trypanosomiasis.