Premium
Male crucifer flea beetles produce an aggregation pheromone
Author(s) -
Peng Chengwang,
Bartelt Robert J.,
Weiss Michael J.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
physiological entomology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-3032
pISSN - 0307-6962
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-3032.1999.00113.x
Subject(s) - entomology , library science , state (computer science) , biology , ecology , mathematics , algorithm , computer science
The flea beetle,Phyllotreta cruciferae(Goeze), is a pest of crucifer crops throughout most of North America (Lamb, 1989). Adult beetle feeding on crucifer vegetables causes small pits in the epidermis, which affects the marketability (Vaughn & Hoy, 1993). Larger population of beetles can kill or stunt seedlings. In the northern Great Plains of the United States and Canada, this species is the most serious pest of springplanted oilseed rape, Brassica napusandB. rapa(Lamb, 1989; Weisset al., 1991). Overwintering adults feed on the cotyledons and stems, resulting in seedling mortality and causing the crop to mature unevenly when the population is high (Burgess, 1977; Lamb, 1989). Peng & Weiss (1992) first reported evidence that P. cruciferae produces an aggregation pheromone. In subsequent studies which attempted to isolate and identify the pheromone, it was proposed first to determine whether one sex of beetles produces pheromones, and if so, then to bioassay and identify the sex-specific compounds. Sex-specific compounds are often pheromone candidates (Bartelt e al., 1990a; Pierceet al., 1995). Here, the results of field-trapping experiments to determine whether males or females produce the pheromone are presented.