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The use of plant volatiles for host location by an ash (Fraxinus) specialist, Caloptilia fraxinella

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Abstract

Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) are used by female moths to find host plants for oviposition and specialist moths can be highly tuned to the volatile signature of their host plant. The ash leaf-coneroller, Caloptilia fraxinella (Ely) (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae) specializes on ash (Fraxinus spp.) (Oleaceae). Its introduction to urban forests in the Canadian Prairie Provinces on both green, F. pennsylvanica, and black ash, F. nigra, offers the opportunity to test odor-mediated host location to two host-plant species. In laboratory and field experiments, C. fraxinella adults oriented to volatiles released from ash seedlings. The antennae of mated female C. fraxinella consistently detected five VOCs released from black and green ash, four of which were common to both species. Blends of natural and synthetic VOCs found to elicit an antennal response were tested in wind tunnel and field bioassays. Synthetic and natural VOCs elicited as much oriented flight from mated female C. fraxinella as ash seedlings, but did not elicit contact with the VOC lure in the wind tunnel. In the field, traps baited with blends of synthetic copies of black and green ash VOCs did not attract more female C. fraxinella than unbaited control traps. These experiments lay the foundation for further research to develop semiochemical lures to attract female C. fraxinella.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Brady Chase, Emily Dombowskie, Elizabeth Hodges, Ilona Houston, Jessica Kwon, Joelle Lemmen-Lechelt, Andrew Perri, and Jocelyn Walker, for assistance in field work. We are indebted to the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Alberta Innovates, and the Alberta Government for scholarships to TJW that funded this research and the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund (ACIDF) and Landscape Alberta Nursery Trades Association (LANTA) for their generous grants (MLE). Thank you to Dr. Wilbert Ronald and Jeffries Nurseries of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, for donation of ash seedlings. Thanks to Dr. Stefan Bartram of the Max Plank Institute for Chemical Ecology (Jena, Germany) for donation of (E)-4,8-dimethyl 1,3,7 nonatriene. Thank you to two anonymous reviewers for suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript that greatly improved this version.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences Bldg, University of Alberta, CW405, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E9, Canada

    Tyler J. Wist & Maya L. Evenden

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Dr., Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Regine Gries

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  1. Tyler J. Wist
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Correspondence to Tyler J. Wist.

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Wist, T.J., Gries, R. & Evenden, M.L. The use of plant volatiles for host location by an ash (Fraxinus) specialist, Caloptilia fraxinella . Chemoecology 24, 229–242 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00049-014-0166-1

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