Chemical diversity of scarab beetle pheromones and its implication in chemical evolution

College

College of Science

Department/Unit

Biology

Document Type

Article

Source Title

European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Volume

5

Issue

1

First Page

65

Last Page

70

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Pheromones are species-specific chemical signals used by insects to communicate, to find a mate, and to identify their territory. In this paper, we analyzed the structural similarity of scarab beetle pheromones using the Tanimoto coefficient in an attempt to draw insights regarding their ecology, evolution and chemotaxonomy. The results showed a very diverse scarab beetle pheromone structure which provides further support to an earlier hypothesis regarding beetle pheromone evolution. In addition, it was found that the scarab beetle pheromone structure cannot be used as a species marker in chemotaxonomy owing to the observed high structural diversity.

html

Disciplines

Biochemistry

Keywords

Scarabaeidae—Chemical ecology; Pheromones; Chemotaxonomy

Upload File

wf_no

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS