Abstract
Stylotermitidae appear peculiar among all termites, feeding in trunks of living trees in South Asia only. The difficulty to collect them limits the ability to study them, and they thus still belong to critically unknown groups in respect to their biology. We used a combination of microscopic observations, chemical analysis and behavioural tests, to determine the source and chemical nature of the trail-following pheromone of Stylotermes faveolus from India and S. halumicus from Taiwan. The sternal gland located at the 5th abdominal segment was the exclusive source of the trail-following pheromone in both S. faveolus and S. halumicus, and it is made up of class I, II and III secretory cells. Using gas chromatography coupled mass spectrometry, (3Z)-dodec-3-en-1-ol (DOE) was identified as the trail-following pheromone which elicits strong behavioural responses in workers at a threshold around 10− 4 ng/cm and 0.1 ng/gland. Our results confirm the switch from complex aldehyde trail-following pheromones occurring in the basal groups to simpler linear alcohols in the ancestor of Kalotermitidae and Neoisoptera.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Director of Research, CSK HPKV Palampur for providing administrative support to this research and also Himachal Pradesh Forest Department for permission to collect termites. We are thankful to Dr. KS Verma and Dr. SD Sharma, Department of Entomology, CSK HPKV Palampur, and Ren-Han Liu (NCHU, Taiwan), for their help during field collection. We are also thankful to Prof. TC Nag, Department of Anatomy and administration of All India Institute of Medical Sciences for providing facilities for material fixation and microscopy. We are thankful to Mr. Ajay Kumar from JNU for his assistance with the initial chemical analysis.
Funding
This study was supported by All India Network Project on Soil Arthropod Pests, the Internal Grant Agency of the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences CZU No. 20233113, and National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (NSTC 111-2313-B-005-021).
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Collection of termites: HT, HFL, SEY; Chemical analysis: JH; Microscopy: HS, MH, JŠ; Bioassays: HT, SA, GS, SEY, JŠ, DSD; Participation of the planning and coordination of the study: RSC, VM; Wrote the manuscript with the inputs of all co-authors: HT, SA, JŠ, DSD.
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Thakur, H., Agarwal, S., Hradecký, J. et al. The Trail-Following Communication in Stylotermes faveolus and S. halumicus (Blattodea, Isoptera, Stylotermitidae). J Chem Ecol 49, 642–651 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-023-01447-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-023-01447-w