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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...

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Autores principales: Party, Virginie, Hanot, Christophe, Büsser, Daniela Schmidt, Rochat, Didier, Renou, Michel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
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.
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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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