| Title: | Some Effects of endo-Brevicomin Background on Southern Pine Beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) Aggregation Behavior |
| Address: | "USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, 2500 Shreveport Highway, Pineville LA 71360, USA. Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1938-2936 (Electronic) 0046-225X (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Semiochemical background in the environment can influence insect orientation to release points of the same or different semiochemicals. endo-Brevicomin is a pheromone component of the tree-killing bark beetle Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) that has a biphasic dose-response curve, enhancing attraction at low release rates but reducing attraction at high rates. We investigated the effect of artificial manipulation of background levels of endo-brevicomin on D. frontalis responses to sources of aggregation attractant in the field. Traps baited with the aggregation pheromone component frontalin and the host odor alpha-pinene were deployed either with or without a background of endo-brevicomin produced by three surrounding dispensers of this semiochemical each located 20 m away. Two tested levels of endo-brevicomin background caused catches to increase by an order of magnitude above those in the absence of background. Presence of background also altered the beetles' biphasic dose-response when endo-brevicomin dispensers were added to traps. Background reduced or concealed attraction-enhancement otherwise observed for low-release dispensers added to traps, and it decreased the release rate necessary to produce reductions in catches. We propose that spatial variability in abundance of natural, background sources of endo-brevicomin in the environment (i.e., infested trees) is a cause of the observed variability in effects of endo-brevicomin dispensers on southern pine beetle behavior in the field. Furthermore, our results illustrate the potential complexity of the density-dependent effects of biphasic pheromone components on bark beetle mass attack and colonization behavior" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Bridged Bicyclo Compounds, Heterocyclic *Coleoptera Pheromones/pharmacology *Pinus *Weevils aggregation biphasic dose-response multifunctional semiochemical;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineSullivan, Brian T Brownie, Cavell eng England 2021/09/07 Environ Entomol. 2021 Dec 17; 50(6):1304-1310. doi: 10.1093/ee/nvab092" |
