Mating behaviour of Aphidius ervi (Hymenoptera: Braconidae): The role of antennae

Title:

Mating behaviour of Aphidius ervi (Hymenoptera: Braconidae): The role of antennae

Creator:

Battaglia, Donatella, Isidoro, Nunzio, Romani , Roberto, Bin, Ferdinando, and Francesco

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:7a85522f-e179-4eb4-a83b-ce79f888a135
uuid:7a85522f-e179-4eb4-a83b-ce79f888a135

Subject:

Mating behaviour, ultrastructure, parasitoid, pheromone, functional anatomy, antennal glands, sensilla, Aphidius ervi, and Aphidiinae

Type:

article, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

In the mating behaviour of Aphidius ervi Haliday the antennae play a pivotal role in partner recognition and acceptance. Mating failure was always observed when antennal contact was experimentally prevented. The male of A. ervi has filiform antennae, consisting of scape, pedicel and 18-20 cylindrical antennomeres (flagellar segments), which bear numerous types of sensory structures and, interspersed among the multiporous plate sensilla, especially on the 1th and 2nd flagellar segments, scattered pores. A secretion oozes from these pores in virgin males exposed to conspecific females. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that these pores are the external openings of integumentary glands. Behavioural and morpho-functional observations indicated that a double step sex recognition mechanism is present in A. ervi, as in other parasitic Hymenoptera. Basically, female recognition by males appears to be mediated by a volatile sex pheromone, that triggers the behavioural sequence leading to mounting. Then, the female recognizes and accepts the male after antennal contact. This is mediated by the secretion that oozes from the male antennal glands, which acts as a contact pheromone.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2002 Volume:99 | Number:4

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false