Abstract
Anoplophora malasiaca (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a serious pest that destroys various landscape and crop trees in Japan. We evaluated the precopulatory responses of three different A. malasiaca populations collected from mandarin orange, willow and blueberry trees. Most of the males accepted mates from within the same host plant population as well as females from the willow and blueberry populations. However, significant number of males from the blueberry and willow populations rejected females from the mandarin orange population immediately after touching them with their antennae. Because all three of the female populations produced contact sex pheromones on their elytra, the females of the mandarin orange population were predicted to possess extra chemicals that repelled the males of the other two populations. β-Elemene was identified as a key component that was only found in mandarin orange-fed females and induced a rejection response in willow-fed males. Our results represent the first example of a female-acquired repellent against conspecific males of different host plant populations, indicating that the host plant greatly affects the female’s sexual attractiveness.
Highlights
Anoplophora malasiaca (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a serious pest that destroys various landscape and crop trees in Japan
Infestations of two devastating insect pests, the Asian longhorned beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky), and the citrus longhorned beetle, Anoplophora chinensis (Forster) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), which are native to parts of Asia, have been reported in North America and Europe
We describe these groups of A. malasiaca adults as “host plant (MO, WI, and BB) populations”
Summary
Anoplophora malasiaca (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a serious pest that destroys various landscape and crop trees in Japan. A. malasiaca is a serious pest of horticultural crops, such as citrus, apple, and pear, as well as street trees, such as the oriental plane tree and willow[4,6] This species has a very wide host plant range, which includes 108 known species of trees belonging to 73 genera[7]. These chemicals are emitted from artificially wounded branches and branches damaged by the adults’ feeding[8] Volatiles from their original host plants attract males but not females[8,9,10,11]. Understanding the differences in responses among populations could provide substantial insights into the background and mechanisms of natural host shifts
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