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Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths
Many animals rely on chemical cues to recognize and locate a resource, and they must extract the relevant information from a complex and changing odor environment. For example, in moths, finding a mate is mediated by a sex pheromone, which is detected in a rich environment of volatile plant compound...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3534683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23301000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052897 |
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author | Party, Virginie Hanot, Christophe Büsser, Daniela Schmidt Rochat, Didier Renou, Michel |
author_facet | Party, Virginie Hanot, Christophe Büsser, Daniela Schmidt Rochat, Didier Renou, Michel |
author_sort | Party, Virginie |
collection | PubMed |
description | Many animals rely on chemical cues to recognize and locate a resource, and they must extract the relevant information from a complex and changing odor environment. For example, in moths, finding a mate is mediated by a sex pheromone, which is detected in a rich environment of volatile plant compounds. Here, we investigated the effects of a volatile plant background on the walking response of male Spodoptera littoralis to the female pheromone. Males were stimulated by combining pheromone with one of three plant compounds, and their walking paths were recorded with a locomotion compensator and analyzed. We found that the addition of certain volatile plant compounds disturbed the orientation toward the sex pheromone. The effect on locomotion was correlated with the capacity of the plant compound to antagonize pheromone detection by olfactory receptor neurons, suggesting a masking effect of the background over the pheromone signal. Moths were more sensitive to changes in background compared to a constant background, suggesting that a background odor also acts as a distracting stimulus. Our experiments show that the effects of odorant background on insect responses to chemical signals are complex and cannot be explained by a single mechanism. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3534683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-35346832013-01-08 Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths Party, Virginie Hanot, Christophe Büsser, Daniela Schmidt Rochat, Didier Renou, Michel PLoS One Research Article Many animals rely on chemical cues to recognize and locate a resource, and they must extract the relevant information from a complex and changing odor environment. For example, in moths, finding a mate is mediated by a sex pheromone, which is detected in a rich environment of volatile plant compounds. Here, we investigated the effects of a volatile plant background on the walking response of male Spodoptera littoralis to the female pheromone. Males were stimulated by combining pheromone with one of three plant compounds, and their walking paths were recorded with a locomotion compensator and analyzed. We found that the addition of certain volatile plant compounds disturbed the orientation toward the sex pheromone. The effect on locomotion was correlated with the capacity of the plant compound to antagonize pheromone detection by olfactory receptor neurons, suggesting a masking effect of the background over the pheromone signal. Moths were more sensitive to changes in background compared to a constant background, suggesting that a background odor also acts as a distracting stimulus. Our experiments show that the effects of odorant background on insect responses to chemical signals are complex and cannot be explained by a single mechanism. Public Library of Science 2013-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3534683/ /pubmed/23301000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052897 Text en © 2013 Party et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Party, Virginie Hanot, Christophe Büsser, Daniela Schmidt Rochat, Didier Renou, Michel Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title | Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title_full | Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title_fullStr | Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title_full_unstemmed | Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title_short | Changes in Odor Background Affect the Locomotory Response to Pheromone in Moths |
title_sort | changes in odor background affect the locomotory response to pheromone in moths |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3534683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23301000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052897 |
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