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Do the amount of sex pheromone and frequency of calling behavior in females affect the mate-searching behavior of males in Dasylepida ishigakiensis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)?

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Abstract

The white grub beetle Dasylepida ishigakiensis Niijima et Kinoshita (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) is a serious sugarcane pest on the Miyako Islands, Okinawa, Japan. Because this beetle stays underground for most of its lifetime, mating disruption using a synthetic sex pheromone has been suggested as a promising control measure. The amount of pheromone (2-butanol) released by the females is known to decrease drastically as they repeat calling each day. In this study, we determined the response of males to different concentrations of (R)-2-butanol, both in the laboratory and in the field. Males showed typical pre-mating behaviors and they were attracted to (R)-2-butanol even at a concentration 1/100 of the amount typically emitted by a female during the 1st period of calling. We examined whether female attractiveness to males was reduced with the frequency of calling, by counting the number of males attracted to females that had called during zero to five periods beforehand. Our results indicated that a high level of female attractiveness was maintained even after three periods of calling. Based on these findings, we propose that releasing synthetic sex pheromone shortly before the start of the mating season and into the late mating season may be optimal for disrupting the mating of this beetle.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by Research and Development Projects for the Application and Promotion of New Policies for Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (no. 23021). We acknowledge the kind support of our project by the late Hiroaki Oroku, ex-director of the Miyakojima Branch of the Okinawa Prefectural Agricultural Research Center (OPARC). We also thank Tatsuya Fujii of the Shin-Etsu Chemical Company for preparing the attractant lures and carrying out the field experiments. We also wish to thank Atsushi Nagayama, Keisuke Kijima, Nobuo Moriya and Koji Takeichi of OPARC for their cooperation and stimulating discussions, and Shoko Kanayama, Masahiro Oike, Kisaki Watanabe, Shota Hamajo, and Miyuki Ueda of Kyoto Gakuen University, and Takayuki Naito, Tomoaki Hongo, Ryuichi Saguchi and Takanobu Terauchi of the Shin-Etsu Chemical Company and Midori Fukaya of Nihon University for their kind help with collecting larvae and carrying out field experiments. Thanks are also due to Yuko Shimizu of the Okinawa Prefectural Plant Protection Center for her cooperation in collecting larvae and to Ikuko Hashimoto for her assistance with rearing the beetles at NIAS and performing laboratory experiments.

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Author notes

  1. Hiroe Yasui & Nao Fujiwara-Tsujii

    Present address: Laboratory of Chemical Ecology, Central Region Agricultural Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8666, Japan

  2. Seiji Tanaka

    Present address: Institute of Agro-biological Sciences, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Ohwashi 1-2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8634, Japan

  3. Norio Arakaki

    Present address: Okinawa Prefectural Agricultural Research Center, Itoman, Okinawa, 901-0336, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Insect Interaction Research, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS), Ohwashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0851, Japan

    Hiroe Yasui, Nao Fujiwara-Tsujii & Seiji Tanaka

  2. Faculty of Bioenvironmental Science, Kyoto Gakuen University, Kameoka, Kyoto, 621-8555, Japan

    Sadao Wakamura

  3. Miyako Branch Office, Okinawa Prefectural Agricultural Research Center (OPARC), Miyakojima, Okinawa, 906-0012, Japan

    Norio Arakaki

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  1. Hiroe Yasui
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Correspondence to Hiroe Yasui.

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H. Yasui and N. Fujiwara-Tsujii contributed equally to this article.

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Yasui, H., Fujiwara-Tsujii, N., Tanaka, S. et al. Do the amount of sex pheromone and frequency of calling behavior in females affect the mate-searching behavior of males in Dasylepida ishigakiensis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)?. Appl Entomol Zool 52, 337–343 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-017-0487-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-017-0487-y

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