Sex Pheromones and Their Impact on Pest Management

Abstract

The idea of using species-specific behavior-modifying chemicals for the management of noxious insects in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, stored products, and for insect vectors of diseases has been a driving ambition through five decades of pheromone research. Hundreds of pheromones and other semiochemicals have been discovered that are used to monitor the presence and abundance of insects and to protect plants and animals against insects. The estimated annual production of lures for monitoring and mass trapping is on the order of tens of millions, covering at least 10 million hectares. Insect populations are controlled by air permeation and attract-and-kill techniques on at least 1 million hectares. Here, we review the most important and widespread practical applications. Pheromones are increasingly efficient at low population densities, they do not adversely affect natural enemies, and they can, therefore, bring about a long-term reduction in insect populations that cannot be accomplished with conventional insecticides. A changing climate with higher growing season temperatures and altered rainfall patterns makes control of native and invasive insects an increasingly urgent challenge. Intensified insecticide use will not provide a solution, but pheromones and other semiochemicals instead can be implemented for sustainable area-wide management and will thus improve food security for a growing population. Given the scale of the challenges we face to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the time is right to intensify goal-oriented interdisciplinary research on semiochemicals, involving chemists, entomologists, and plant protection experts, in order to provide the urgently needed, and cost-effective technical solutions for sustainable insect management worldwide.

Fatal attraction: sexually cannibalistic invaders attract naive native mantids

“…Indeed, the effectiveness of competing pheromone signals in disrupting the reproduction of insects is attested to by the development of pest control methods which successfully use pheromones for this very purpose [17]. Airborne sex pheromones of insects, including those of praying mantids can operate over long distances [9] and therefore may allow a single M. caffra female to interfere with native male mate searching over a large area and to capture males from distant populations.…”

Pheromone-based Mating and Aggregation in the Sorghum Chafer, Pachnoda interrupta

“…Both sexes are attracted, and traps catch adults, which is the life stage causing damage in this system. Trapping has proven efficient for control in other pest species where adults are the damaging stage (reviewed by Witzgall et al 2010). PAA could be combined with previously identified host-related attractants, such as 2,3-butanediol (Bengtsson et al 2009), eugenol, and methyl salicylate (WoldeHawariat et al 2007) for evaluation of synergistic effects, and to further improve the attractiveness of lures.…”

Animal perception in gravel-bed rivers: scales of sensing and environmental controls on sensory information

“…Such information is important for understanding why animals are distributed as they are and will help in identifying the underlying causes of a particular habitat preference, that correlative approaches can only hint at. Knowledge about sensory perception is already used to manage animal distributions in rivers, including the manipulation of fish movements through managed stretches (see review in Kemp et al 2012) and in attempts to control invasive and pest species (Witzgall et al 2010), such as signal crayfish in British rivers (Stebbing et al 2004).…”