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The trail-following pheromone of the termite Serritermes serrifer

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Abstract

The Neotropical family Serritermitidae is a monophyletic group of termites including two genera, Serritermes and Glossotermes, with different way-of-life, the former being the sole obligatory inquiline among “lower” termites, while the latter is a single-site nester feeding on dry rotten red wood. Like the most advanced termite’s family, the Termitidae, the Serritermitidae is an inner group of the paraphyletic family “Rhinotermitidae”, but unlike the Termitidae, it has been poorly studied so far. In this study, we bring new insights into the chemical ecology of this key taxon. We studied the trail-following pheromone of Serritermes serrifer and we identified (10Z,13Z)-nonadeca-10,13-dien-2-one as the only component of the trail-following pheromone of this termite species, as it is the case in Glossotermes, the other genus belonging to Serritermitidae. This result makes the family Serritermitidae clearly distinct from other Rhinotermitidae, such as the termites Psammotermes and Prorhinotermes, that use (3Z,6Z,8E)-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol and/or neocembrene as trail-following pheromones.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Pavlína Knobová (Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague), Juliana Soares de Lima, and Gabriel Sampaio de Jesus (Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Câmpus Henrique Santilo) for their help during fieldwork. We also thank Jana Krasulová for her help with preliminary experiments.

Funding

PS was supported by the project EVA4.0 (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803). PS was supported by CIGA No. 20184307 and IGA FLD No. B_19_04 from the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague. HFC was supported by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) productivity grants. DSD, TB and JŠ were supported by the Internal Grant Agency of Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences (project number 20205014).

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Author notes

  1. David Sillam-Dussès and Jaromír Hradecký: Co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology UR 4443, University Sorbonne Paris Nord, Villetaneuse, France

    David Sillam-Dussès

  2. Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Sillam-Dussès, Thomas Bourguignon & Jan Šobotník

  3. Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jaromír Hradecký, Petr Stiblik & Jan Šobotník

  4. Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Câmpus Henrique Santilo,, Anápolis, GO, Brazil

    Hélida Ferreira da Cunha

  5. Centro de Ciências Naturais E Humanas, Universidade Federal do ABC, São Bernardo do Campo, SP, Brazil

    Tiago F. Carrijo

  6. CSIRO National Collections and Marine Infrastructure, G.P.O. Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Michael J. Lacey

  7. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, 1919–1 Tancha, Onna-son, Okinawa, 904–0495, Japan

    Thomas Bourguignon

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  1. David Sillam-Dussès
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  2. Jaromír Hradecký
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Correspondence to David Sillam-Dussès.

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Communicated by Marko Rohlfs.

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Sillam-Dussès, D., Hradecký, J., Stiblik, P. et al. The trail-following pheromone of the termite Serritermes serrifer. Chemoecology 31, 11–17 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00049-020-00324-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00049-020-00324-2

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