Trends in Plant Science

Trends in Plant Science

Volume 23, Issue 2, February 2018, Pages 100-111
Journal home page for Trends in Plant Science

Opinion
Plant Volatiles as Mate-Finding Cues for Insects

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2017.11.004Get rights and content

Trends

Species-specific sex pheromones are commonly considered to be the principle cues leading to successful mating in insects. However, increasing evidence suggests that plant volatiles play an additional and highly important role in the mate location process.

Volatiles released from various plant structures (leaves, flowers, and fruits) may significantly contribute to mate finding by a wide variety of insect species, including herbivores, pollinators, and parasitoids.

By using plant volatiles and pheromones in combination, some insects are expected to be able to find mates in a timely and efficient manner.

In many insects the use of plant volatiles to find food as well as mates may have evolved as an efficient foraging strategy.

Plant volatiles are used not only by herbivorous insects to find their host plants, but also by the natural enemies of the herbivores to find their prey. There is also increasing evidence that plant volatiles, in addition to species-specific pheromones, help these insects to find mating partners. Plant structures such as flowers, fruit, and leaves are frequently rendezvous sites for mate-seeking insects. Here we propose that the combined use of plant volatiles and pheromones can efficiently guide insects to these sites, where they will have access to both mates and food. This notion is supported by the fact that plant volatiles can stimulate the release of sex pheromones and can render various insects more receptive to potential mates.

Section snippets

The Underestimated Role of Plant Volatiles in Mate Location

Plants provide many insects with food and shelter and are key players in the orchestration of multitrophic interactions. The interactions between plants and insects frequently result from the detection of a diversity of plant volatiles by the well-developed olfactory system of insects. Plants normally emit a bouquet of volatile compounds of low molecular weight, lipophilic character, and high volatility 1, 2, 3 and these compounds easily meander a few meters to dozens of meters away from the

Leaf-Produced Volatiles

Leaf-emitted volatiles are important cues for phytophagous insects to locate host plants, not only as food sources [13], but also to find conspecifics of the opposite sex, as host plants are opportune mating sites. There is ample evidence for the combined use of plant volatiles and sex pheromones for mate location by herbivorous insects. Wind tunnel assays, for instance, have shown that males of both the grapevine moth Lobesia botrana and the grape berry moth Eupoecilia ambiguella are attracted

Stimulation

Several phytophagous insects start to release pheromones or show increased mating behaviors only when they perceive the odor of a host plant. For example, males of the palm weevil Rhynchophorus palmarum release an aggregation pheromone when they are exposed to the host-plant volatile ethyl acetate [19]. Females of the cowpea weevil Callosobruchus maculatus increase the release of pheromones in the presence of host-plant seeds [62]. Males of some tephritid fly species (Diptera: Tephritidae) are

Foraging for Mates with Plant Volatiles and Pheromone in Combination: Evidence from Parasitoid Studies

Different parasitoid species (also closely related ones) may parasitize the same host species, and possibly host-damaged plants are attractive to males and females of these species at the same time [51]. To identify conspecifics of the opposite sex on plants, it is essential that they can use more specific cues such as pheromones, but perhaps also visual [57] and vibrational 83, 84 cues. Tracking a plant volatile plume and a pheromone cue could be quite different in some parasitoids.

Evidence for the Integration of Mate and Host Location

Most studies have treated food (host) and mate location as two exclusive processes (e.g., 86, 87, 88). However, it is increasingly evident from various studies on phytophagous pests and parasitic wasps that we should reconsider this distinction. For example, in the striped cucumber beetle Acalymma vittatum only cucumber plants that are fed on by males, and not female-damaged ones, strongly attract conspecific beetles in the field, suggesting that this species uses inducible host-plant volatiles

Concluding Remarks and Future Perspectives

An important role of plant volatiles in mate location by insects is to be expected because of the close interactions between plants and many insect species, making plants ideal rendezvous sites for these insects. Volatiles released from various plant tissues (e.g., leaves, flowers, fruits) can affect and stimulate the production and release of sex pheromones. In addition, the plant-provided airborne signals provide spatial information on the presence of plants in the habitat and where the

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Thomas Degen from the Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel for tutorials on making figures and Gaétan Glauser from the Neuchâtel Platform of Analytical Chemistry for suggestions on studying volatile chemistry. The research was funded by the China Scholar Council (CSC) (no: 201206300090).

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