Variability within sex pheromone signalling systems is generally believed to be low because of strong stabilizing selection; yet the noctuid moth Heliothis subflexa (Hs) shows significant intraspecific variation. One possible explanation is that females may alter their sex pheromone blend depending on prevailing olfactory cues in the habitat, which we termed the 'experience hypothesis'. This co...

Budding yeast cells exist in two mating types, a and α, which use peptide pheromones to communicate with each other during mating. Mating depends on the ability of cells to polarize up pheromone gradients, but cells also respond to spatially uniform fields of pheromone by polarizing along a single axis. We used quantitative measurements of the response of a cells to α-factor to produce a predic...

Ant Colony Optimization algorithms were inspired by the foraging behavior of ants that accumulate pheromone trails on the shortest paths to food. Some ACO algorithms employ pheromone trail limits to improve exploration and avoid stagnation by ensuring a non-zero probability of selection for all trails. The MAX-MIN Ant System (MMAS) sets explicit pheromone trail limits while the Ant Colony Syste...

De novo synthesis of contact female sex pheromone and hydrocarbons in Blattella germanica was examined using short in vivo incubations. Accumulation of pheromone on the epicuticular surface and the internal pheromone titer were related to age-specific changes in hydrocarbon synthesis and accumulation in normal and allatectomized females. The incorporation of radiolabel from [1-14C]propionate in...

Chemical signals are prevalent in sexual communication systems. Mate recognition has been extensively studied within the Lepidoptera, where the production and recognition of species-specific sex pheromone signals are typically the defining character. While the specific blend of compounds that makes up the sex pheromones of many species has been characterized, the molecular mechanisms underpinni...

BACKGROUND Lutzomyia longipalpis is the South American vector of Leishmania infantum, the etiologic agent of visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Male L. longipalpis produce a sex-aggregation pheromone that is critical in mating, yet very little is known about its accumulation over time or factors involved in release. This laboratory study aimed to compare accumulation of pheromone over time and determ...

In this paper we present a new, non-pheromone-based algorithm inspired by the behaviour of biological bees. The algorithm combines both recruitment and navigation strategies. We investigate whether this new algorithm outperforms pheromone-based algorithms in the task of foraging. From our experiments, we conclude that (i) the non-pheromone-based algorithm is significantly more efficient when fi...

In the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis, pathogenic development is initiated when two compatible haploid cells fuse and form the infectious dikaryon. Mating is dependent on pheromone recognition by compatible cells. In this report, we set out to evaluate the relationship between the cell cycle and the pheromone response in U. maydis. To achieve this, we designed a haploid pheromone-responsive s...

In Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) artiicial ants communicate by laying synthetic pheromone along the edges on their path through a decision graph. This attracts following ants so that they will likely search in the same region of the search space. The problem of how the pheromone information should be evaluated in ant systems is studied in this paper. The standard approach for pheromone evaluati...

Pheromones play major roles in intraspecific communication in many animals. Elaborated communication systems in eusocial insects provide excellent materials to study neural mechanisms for social pheromone processing. We previously reported that alarm pheromone information is processed in a specific cluster of glomeruli in the antennal lobe of the ant Camponotus obscuripes. However, representati...