Electroantennographic Detection of Anomala cuprea Hope (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) Sex Pheromone

Abstract

Plant feeding beetles of Scarabaeidae include various economically important species in agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Most of these insects cause damage both in the larval and adult stages by feeding on underground parts and on leaves, respectively. The use of semiochemicals in these pest management is paramount, but sex pheromone of only a few species of the Scarabaeidae have been identified, namely, the grass grub beetle, Costelytra zealandica (Henzell And Lowe, 1970), the Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica (Tumlinson et al., 1977) and the soybean beetle, Anomala rufocuprea (Tamaki Et al., 1985). In some species there has been evidence of occurrence of sex-(Domek and Johnson, 1987) and aggregation-pheromone (Domek And Johnson, 1988), nevertheless identification of the semiochemicals have been precluded by the lack of appropriate bioassays (Domek Et al., 1990). In the course of the work on the sex pheromone of Anomala cuprea we modified the GC-Electro-antennographic Detector (GC-EAD) technique, which allowed us to use for the first time GC-EAD with lamellate antennae. As described here, this technique may be worth to couple with bioassay in order to alleviate the difficulties caused by the complicated communication system of these insects. © 1992, JAPANESE SOCIETY OF APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. All rights reserved.