Abstract
Gas chromatography (GC) is essential for chemical ecology research because of its excellent separation power, sensitivity, and universal detection. Several thousand pheromones and related compounds have been identified, often in nanogram or lower quantities. Specialized techniques have been crucial for these microscale identifications. Coupled gas chromatography-electroantennogram detection (GC-EAD) locates and determines the number of possible pheromone components in crude extracts. Because of the sensitivity of insect antennae to pheromones, GC-EAD is particularly useful when the amount of pheromone in extracts is below detection limits of GC or GC-MS. In such cases, retention index (RI) data and RI differentials between different GC phases have allowed complete identification of novel natural products at femtogram levels. Enantiomeric purities and absolute configurations of pheromones are readily determined by analysis on chiral stationary phases. Micropreparative GC methods using megabore or capillary columns provide microgram amounts of pure chemicals for NMR analysis.
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