Defense of pyrethrum flowers: repelling herbivores and recruiting carnivores by producing aphid alarm pheromone

Emission of alarm pheromone by non - preyed aphid colonies 1

Pyrethrum flowers and pyrethroid insecticides.

The natural pyrethrins from the daisy-like flower, Tanacetum or Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium, are nonpersistent insecticides of low toxicity to mammals. Synthetic analogs or pyrethroids, evolved from the natural compounds by successive isosteric modifications, are more potent and stable and are the newest important class of crop protection chemicals. They retain many of the favorable propertie...

Aphid Alarm Pheromone as a Cue for Ants to Locate Aphid Partners

The mutualistic relationships that occur between myrmecophilous aphids and ants are based on the rich food supply that honeydew represents for ants and on the protection they provide against aphid natural enemies. While aphid predators and parasitoids actively forage for oviposition sites by using aphid semiochemicals, scouts of aphid-tending ant species would also benefit from locating honeyde...

Scaling Population Cycles of Herbivores and Carnivores

Summary: Periodicity in population dynamics is a fundamental issue. In addition to current species-specific analyses, allometry facilitates understanding of limit cycles amongst different species. So far, body-size regressions have been derived for the oscillation period of the population densities of warm-blooded species, in particular herbivores. Here, we extend the allometric analysis to oth...

Identification of the Alarm Pheromone of Cowpea Aphid, and Comparison With Two Other Aphididae Species

In response to a predator attack, many Aphidinae species release an alarm pheromone, which induces dispersal behavior in other individuals within the colony. The major component of this pheromone is the sesquiterpene (E)-β-farnesene (Eβf), but variations occur between aphid species. In the present work, we collected, identified, and quantified the alarm pheromone of Aphis craccivora Koch (Hemip...