Abstract
Insects detect their hosts or mates primarily through olfaction, and olfactory receptors (ORs) are at the core of odorant detection. Each species has evolved a unique repertoire of ORs whose functional properties are expected to meet its ecological needs, though little is known about the molecular basis of olfaction outside Diptera. Here we report a pioneer functional analysis of a large array of ORs in a lepidopteran, the herbivorous pest Spodoptera littoralis. We demonstrate that most ORs are narrowly tuned to ubiquitous plant volatiles at low, relevant odorant titres. Our phylogenetic analysis highlights a basic conservation of function within the receptor repertoire of Lepidoptera, across the expansive evolutionary radiation of different major clades. Our study provides a reference for further studies of olfactory mechanisms in Lepidoptera, a historically crucial insect order in olfactory research.
Highlights
Insects detect their hosts or mates primarily through olfaction, and olfactory receptors (ORs) are at the core of odorant detection
To provide a better view on the evolution of lepidopteran ORs, we investigated the function of a large array of ORs in a single species
We built a phylogeny of lepidopteran ORs using S. littoralis receptors, together with OR repertoires identified in seven other lepidopteran species from seven different families (Fig. 1)
Summary
Insects detect their hosts or mates primarily through olfaction, and olfactory receptors (ORs) are at the core of odorant detection. This observation suggests that in each order, ORs have followed different evolutionary trajectories as insects adapted to new ecological niches Such adaptation has been investigated in Diptera, thanks to the functional characterization of the OR repertoires from D. melanogaster[8,9,10,11,12] and Anopheles gambiae, the primary malaria vector mosquito[13,14]; these pioneering works notably demonstrated that the OR repertoires of these organisms are specialized for the detection of ecologically relevant chemicals. We provide the first evidence of a functional clustering of receptors within the phylogeny of lepidopteran ORs, with receptors from most basal lineages responding to aromatic compounds, whereas response spectra in more recently emerged clades are dominated by terpenes or aliphatics
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