2012 Program (PDF) - International Society of Chemical Ecology

Wednesday 25th July, 9:00 – 10:00 hNight and day: moth and butterfly pheromones not so different after allLÖFSTEDT C 1 , BRATTSTRÖM O 2 , LASSANCE J-M 1# , LIENARD M 1# , WANG H-L 11 Department of Biology, Lund University, SE-223 62 Lund, SWEDEN2 University Museum of Zoology, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge,Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK# Present address: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University,Cambridge MA 02138, USAChrister.Lofstedt@biol.lu.seThe Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) are the second largest group of insects with>180,000 described species. In moths (ca 165,000 species), mate communication ismediated by the use of female-produced long-range sex pheromones that are chemicallyconserved. The vast majority of moth sex pheromones are fatty-acid derived long-chainunsaturated alcohols, acetates or aldehydes. More or less species-specific blends havebeen selected for efficient mate finding and reproductive isolation. On the other hand,butterflies (ca 15,000 species) appear to have lost female-produced pheromones as part oftheir mate communication and typically rely on visual cues to mediate long-range attraction.Though they have not completely abandoned chemical communication: they use chemicallydiverse, male-produced courtship pheromones, which have been selected as sexualornaments, aphrodisiacs or anti-aphrodisiacs.Members of two gene-families, namely desaturases (1) and reductases (FARs) (2,3), havebeen reported to be of fundamental importance for the specific production of sexpheromones in female moths. Also, Lepidoptera-specific biosynthetic lineages appear tohave evolved early in the evolution of Lepidoptera (3, 4). We previously reported that maleEuropean corn borer moths produce courtship pheromones that are chemically similar to thefemale-produced pheromones (5). Interestingly, investigations of pheromone communicationin African Bush Brown butterflies (genus Bicyclus) revealed that male butterflies can producepheromone components structurally similar to those biosynthesized by female moths (6).Recent investigations have demonstrated that males of Bicyclus anynana and B. martius notonly smell like female moths but as a matter of fact make use of orthologous biosyntheticgenes for pheromone production.A conceptual model of birth-and-death evolution of multigene families (see 1 and referencestherein) explains not only the divergence of female moth pheromones but also the productionof female pheromone components in male corn borer moths and the evolution of butterfliesthat smell like moths. Moth and butterfly pheromones are not so different after all – at leastnot when it comes to biosynthesis. Current investigations are underway to examine whetherthe parallelism extends to the reception of the pheromone signals.References1. Roelofs & Rooney (2003) PNAS 100: 9179-9184.2. Lassance et al. (2010) Nature 466:486-4893. Liénard et al. (2010) PNAS 107:10955-109604. Liénard et al. (2008) BMC Evol Biol 8:2705. Lassance & Löfstedt (2009) BMC Biol 7:106. Nieberding et al. (2008) PLoS ONE 3:e2751AcknowledgmentsThe research was supported by the Swedish Research Council VR, the Royal PhysiographicSociety in Lund and the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation.28