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Behavioral Monitoring of Trained Insects for Chemical Detection
Author(s) -
Rains Glen C.,
Utley Samuel L.,
Lewis W. Joe
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
biotechnology progress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.572
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1520-6033
pISSN - 8756-7938
DOI - 10.1021/bp050164p
Subject(s) - hymenoptera , braconidae , biology , odor , parasitoid wasp , parasitoid , horticulture , botany , toxicology , neuroscience
A portable, handheld volatile odor detector (“Wasp Hound”) that utilizes a computer vision system and Microplitis croceipes (Cresson) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a parasitoid wasp, as the chemical sensor was created. Five wasps were placed in a test cartridge and placed inside the device. Wasps were either untrained or trained by associative learning to detect 3‐octanone, a common fungal volatile chemical. The Wasp Hound sampled air from the headspace of corn samples prepared within the lab and, coupled with Visual Cortex , a software program developed using the LabView graphical programming language, monitored and analyzed wasp behavior. The Wasp Hound, with conditioned wasps, was able to detect 0.5 mg of 3‐octanone within a 240 mL glass container filled with feed corn (≈2.6 × 10 −5 mol/L). The Wasp Hound response to the control (corn alone) and a different chemical placed in the corn (0.5 mg of myrcene) was significantly different than the response to the 3‐octanone. Wasp Hound results from untrained wasps were significantly different from trained wasps when comparing the responses to 3‐octanone. The Wasp Hound may provide a unique method for monitoring grains, peanuts, and tree nuts for fungal growth associated with toxin production, as well as detecting chemicals associated with forensic investigations and plant/animal disease.