The nature and development of sex attractant specificity in cockroaches of the genus Periplaneta. III. Normal intra‐ and interspecific behavioral responses and responses of insects with juvenile hormone‐altered antennae

Abstract

Male cockroaches of the species Periplaneta americana rely on a female-produced airborne pheromone to initiate courting behavior, The male responds to the presence of the pheromone with rapid, oriented locomotion. Contact with the female (or other males or larvae) elicits wing-raising and other responses characteristic of male courtship behavior. Males of other species within the genus Periplaneta also respond to a female-produced pheromone, but with less intensity than P. americana. Cross-species testing shows that P. brunnea males respond to the Periplaneta pheromone with the same intensity elicited by the P. brunnea pheromone. A second reaction group containing P. australasiae, P. fuliginosa, and P. japonica also responds to the P. americana pheromone and their conspecific pheromones, but with a low intensity characteristic of these species. Alteration of the antennal morphology of P. americana males can be experimentally induced by manipulating the level of juvenile hormone during development. Males with a full adult complement of olfactory receptors all respond behaviorally to the pheromone. Adult males with larval antennae produced by bilateral treatment with exogenous juvenile hormone-mimic do not respond to the pheromone, although they are completely adult in other respects.Cockroaches employ pheromones or sex attractants to initiate courtship behavior (Roth and Barth, '67). The mating behavior of species within the genus Periplaneta, especially that of the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, has been described in detail by several workers (Roth and Willis, '52; Wharton et al., '54a;b; Barth, '61, '70; Roth and Barth, '67; Frazier, '70; Simon, '71). In general, these studies indicate that in the genus Periplaneta the initial step in male mating behavior is olfactory reception of a female-produced sex attractant.Mating behavior in cockroaches is also under endocrine control. The production of sex attractant by adult females in some species is under the control of the corpora allata, endocrine glands associated with the cerebral ganglia (Barth, '65, '68). In P. americana sex attractant is produced in large quantities by virgin females one to two weeks after the adult ecdysis ( m a rton and Wharton, '57; Bodenstein, '70). Pheromone production stops during pregnancy and generally declines with age (Barth, '68). The midgut is the most likely site of pheromone production in P. americana (Bodenstein, '701, which makes female feces a good source of sex attractant for experimental studies (cf. Raisbeck, '75) * Sex attractant reception in males is accomplished by antennae which have a large number of olfactory sense organs (Roth and Barth, '67). As 73

Identification of a sex pheromone of the chrysanthemum lace bug Corythucha marmorata (Hemiptera: Tingidae)

“…In the natural condition of relatively high density, such erroneous sex recognition by active males may occur 22 . The bioassay method conducted in the present study might induce the remarkable mounting behaviour between males using female sex pheromone 19 or keeping males in isolation 23 , all of which are unusual for field conditions.…”

Hormonal Control of the Phase Polyphenism of the Desert Locust: A Review of Current Understanding

“…On the other hand, it is of considerable interest that the removal of the antennae in nymphs of S. gregaria brings about colour changes in the cuticle and haemolymph which are remarkably similar to those which follow solitarization or implantation of CA [36]. Moreover, exogenous JH definitely has an effect in the number of the antennal sensilla differentiated from nymphal to adult type in cockroaches [50,[54][55][56]. For example, in Blatella germanica all types of sensilla increase in number at the final moult and this increase is prevented if JH is injected into the nymphs [56].…”