Trail-Following Pheromones in the Termite Subfamily Syntermitinae (Blattodea, Termitoidae, Termitidae)

Trail-following behavior is a key to ecological success of termites, allowing them to orient themselves between the nesting and foraging sites. This behavior is controlled by specific trail-following pheromones produced by the abdominal sternal gland occurring in all termite species and developmental stages. Trail-following communication has been studied in a broad spectrum of species, but the “higher” termites (i.e. Termitidae) from the subfamily Syntermitinae remain surprisingly neglected. To fill this gap, we studied the trail-following pheromone in six genera and nine species of Syntermitinae. Our chemical and behavioral experiments showed that (3 Z ,6 Z ,8 E )-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol is the single component of the pheromone of all the termite species studied, except for Silvestritermes euamignathus. This species produces both (3 Z ,6 Z )-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol and neocembrene, but only (3 Z ,6 Z )-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol elicits trail-following behavior. Our results indicate the importance of (3 Z ,6 Z ,8 E )-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol, the most widespread communication compound in termites, but also the repeated switches to other common pheromones as exemplified by S. euamignathus .

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Journal of Chemical Ecology

• Publication date

  2020-06-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10886-020-01180-8PMID 32529331
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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