Dear Vivek, look into honeybees and moths, there are several examples of glands producing these pheromones. Like 9 ODA for example, the queen substance.

BROCKMANN, A., DIETZ, D., SPAETHE, J. & TAUTZ, J. 2006. Beyond 9-ODA: SEX Pheromone Communication in the European Honey Bee Apis mellifera L. Journal of Chemical Ecology 32: 657-667.

PIRK, C.W.W., SOLE, C.L. & CREWE, R.M. 2011. Pheromones. In: HEPBURN, H.R. & RADLOFF, S.E. Book (Ed.) Pheromones. 207-214. Springer Berlin Heidelberg,

Thanks Christian

Dear Christian,

My point is ... May be there are certain bacteria present in the glands that produce these pheromone compounds!!! Can't it be possible ?? :)

Dear Vivek, the pathways for the queen and worker substances is well known.

PLETTNER, E., SLESSOR, K.N., WINSTON, M.L. & OLIVER, J.E. 1996. Caste-Selective Pheromone Biosynthesis in Honeybees. Science 271: 1851-1853.

So I would say no, furthermore since the sex pheromone play also a role in reproductive division of labour in honeybees I would have my doubts that it is not produced by the bees themselves.

Vivek,

Your question is a surprise because we have talk about it yesterday in my labs during lunch. You can contact this person:

http://www.imbe.fr/spip.php?page=pageperso&nom=SRENG&prenom=Leam

He has result that suggest (strongly) that an attractive molecule is produced by endogeneous bacteria in cockroach.

Thanks Christian. Let me go through some more studies and come to a conclusion.

seems to me that you descirb this way the Red Queen model that is known in Geographical parthenogensis.

Thanks Dr. Corse,

I would contact Dr. Leam Sreng as it seems interesting!!!

Hi Dr. Cosendai,

I really could not relate my hypothesis to the Red Queen model. Could you explain how my hypothesis relates to Red Queen model/effect. Please do the needful.

Cheers.

So far I know Red Queen hypothesis is that microorganism influence the sex ratio of a larger organism. The microorganism can be a parasite (but I am not sure that this is obligatory) it turn the sex ratio to their advantage orienting the "production" of male or female individual so that the microorganism survive regardless to the larger organism the are living in / with. Discussed in Lost Sex (http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/evolutionary+%26+developmental+biology/book/978-90-481-2769-6)

For me the more general phenomenon that you reveal with your short description of your work and on going work.

Your male are influenced for the mating selection of the female by the product of the microorganism they are inoculate. Does it influence the sex ratio ?

As far as I remember some aggregation/sex pheromones of bark beetles were shown to be produced by gut microorganisms already back in the 70ties. Unfortunately, I do not have the reference(s) at hand.

Thanks for the answer Dr. Cosendai,

We have been maintaining our insect culture and have been recording the "sex ratio" for around 4 years, but, we have not seen any difference in the sex ratio. The sex ratio of our insect is always 1:1.2 (F:M).

Hi Dr. Zdarek,

Thanks. Yes the study of bark beetles aggregation/sex pheromones was published in Nature a long time ago. After that i have not seen any research on those lines. I have the reference with me.

Cheers

It may be possible. Recent evidences suggest almost everything is cotnrolled by microorganisms, including our own behavior.

WOW !!!!!! Dr. Haribal .... References please :) :) The topic is getting interesting.

Very interesting...

Your hypothesis may be at least partially true. It is possible that the bacteria do not produce pheromones in the strict sense, but their secretions act together with those produced by the host.

I remembered the publication in that vein relating to the scent communication of hyenas. I have not read this work, but I found it in my notes on the "curiosities".

Bacteria residing in the scent glands of hyenas appear to play a crucial role in producing the odours the animals use to communicate.

Theis et al.; "Symbiotic bacteria appear to mediate hyena social odors"; PNAS 2013.

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1306477110

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258446212_Symbiotic_bacteria_appear_to_mediate_hyena_social_odors

Article Symbiotic bacteria appear to mediate hyena social odors

Awesome Dr. Rozpedek, thanks a lot for the reference. Next I am going to capture odours from germ-free line, non-germ free line insects and the isolated bacteria. I will be using them in my behavioural assays to prove that the compounds were produced by bacteria. I have already got a clue about this. Thanks a lot ones again.

Cheers.

I am not an entomologist but I think yes sex pheromones are produced by insects.

A pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individual.

Many if not all insect species, such as the ant L. aservorum ,the moth Helicoverpa zea and the butterfly Edith's Checkerspot release sex pheromones to attract a mate, and many lepidopterans (moths and butterflies) can detect a potential mate from as far away as 10 km

Thanks for the answer Arun :) but I guess you have not understood my question. :)

Hi Vivek,

It is a very interesting question. I won't be surprised if bacteria play an important role here. I like to read you are already testing your hypotheses and I am impatient to discover your paper...

I have no specific answer, sorry, but I would like to underline that we are just starting to discover the preponderant impact of bacteria (and other microorganisms) on our daily life, and more generally, on every living organisms. The Hyena case pointed out by Mariusz is a good example...

Perhaps you will enjoy to read some of the vulgarisation articles written by Rob Dunn (http://www.robrdunn.com/). He is regularly reflecting on the impact of bacteria on human biology, ecology and evolution. See for instance:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/01/15/sick-people-smell-bad-why-dogs-sniff-dogs-humans-sniff-humans-and-dogs-sometimes-sniff-humans/

And:

http://www.robrdunn.com/2014/01/why-mosquitoes-like-you-and-not-me/

You may also like to read the literature dealing with the "holobiont" concept. See for instance: Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg and Eugene Rosenberg (2008) Role of microorganisms in the evolution of animals and plants: the hologenome theory of evolution. FEMS Microbiology Reviews 32: 723–735.

Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00123.x/full.

I hope you may find these links interesting and useful...

Good luck with your research.

Thibaut

Hi Vivek,

Please see this paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/46/20051.long

It should be interesting for your team!

Good luck,

Eugenia

Strange discussion, specially because it speaks of "insect" in general. With pheromone communication presents in every insect group, and the very different chemical structures released, there are a lot of different biosynthetic paths and so you can find some in which bacteria are involved and some not !

Dear Dr. Delsnni,

Thanks a lot. Awesome references. I would surly send you my paper ones finished.

Thanks for your wishes

With kind regards,

Vivek Kempraj

Thanks Dr. Rashkovetsky

Thanks Dr. Renou

Dear Vivek,

you might want to look out for this paper: Venu, I., Durisko, D., Xu, JP and Dukas, R. In press. Social attraction mediated by fruit flies’ microbiome. Journal of Experimental Biology. Reuven Dukas gave a talk that seems to have much in common with your research question.

Dear Gerit,

Thank you. Good reference.

Hello,

It is becoming more and more clear that the microbiota plays an astonishing role in animal and insects in particular. Usually, pheromones are produced by specific secretory cells. However, it would not be impossible that a primer released from such glands in a pouch could be finally transformed by microorganisms living in the pouch into the actual pheromone. An interesting side-question would be an the mechanism of inheritance of these micro-organims.

Best of luck with your experiments !

JLH

Thanks Dr. Hemptinn.

There is very strong evidence that insect use cuticular hydrocarbons as pheromones. Data come from many different species. In fact, the fields of Chemical Ecology is dominated by such stories. The contribution of the gut microbiom to pheromones is just starting to emerge. I think the data are strong and this is likely to be real.

At least in the case of moth pheromones, the expression in yeast of several genes involved in the biosynthesis of female sex pheromones, indicates that the insect is actually producing the pheromone. More recently, transient expression of several of these genes in a plant resulted in the full production of moth pheromones by the plant. See http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4353/full/ncomms4353.html

Thanks Dr. Ben-Shahar and Dr. Ritzel

Please, check excellent papers by Luke Holman, Leigh Simmons and their co-authors.

Bubba your work seems very interesting. I guess I can connect it to a similar kind of work in hyena

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258446212_Symbiotic_bacteria_appear_to_mediate_hyena_social_odors

Thanks

Article Symbiotic bacteria appear to mediate hyena social odors

Haha !! But I find your publications interesting and can cause a dent to the way we see semiochemical communication in nature.

All the best Bubba

It's worth noting that human axillary odour is the product of the activity of coryneform and cocciform bacteria on initially odourless apocrine gland secretions. The ratio of these types between men and women is different, perhaps accounting for the sharper axillary odour of men - though is not proven. There is no evidence that a person's sex is coded in the scent, though countless experiments using T-shirts worn overnight under controlled conditions indicate that much information about a wearer can be detected by a panel of sniffers. Interestingly, the genetic configuration of a person's HLA complex (immune system) appears to be expressed in axillary scent. In T-shirt experiments men and women prefer the scent of the axillary secretion of a person with dissimilar HLA to that of someone with a similar HLA. Carole Ober and her team looked at the relationship between the human HLA configuration and mate choice in a Hutterite community in the USA and found men and women chose partners with HLA configurations slightly dissimilar to their own, with very few choosing partners with similar HLA configurations, though they made no claim for any role of scent in human mate choice. Of course, information about HLA may not be carried by the part of the smell that is the product of bacterial degradation, but by some other part.

Ober, C., Weitkamp, L.R., Cox, N., et al. 1997 HLA and mate choice in humans. American Journal of Human Genetics 61: 497-504

Don't remember the details right now, but in some bark beetles, gut microbes produce pheromone components. This occurs at least in Ips paraconfusus, might be other examples.

Thats what i have been looking for Dr. Kirkendall. Thanks a lot. Can you direct me to some publications regarding the same.

regards,

Vivek Kempraj

Sorry about the delay in answering, didn't realize you had responded. Yes, I can direct you to some publications. But when looking for some papers, I re-read the review by Blomquist et al (2010), who write "Earlier studies suggested that bark beetle pheromones could be produced by gut tract bacteria (Brand et al., 1975) or fungus (Brand et al., 1976). It is difficult to reconcile JH regulated pheromone production with a bacterial or fungal source of pheromone. The genomic work done (described below) in I. pini in which mRNA used to construct cDNA libraries of mRNAs with poly-A tails provides further evidence against a major role of gut bacteria in pheromone production."

On the other hand, there is the Gitau et al (2013) review, see Table 1, trans-verbenol. This alcohol results from the oxidation of one of the major defensive components of conifer resin, alpha-pinene. Trans-verbenol is an important component of the pheromone  system of many bark beetles, and for Dendroctonus it seems that gut bacteria help detoxify alpha-pinene, resulting in the production of trans-verbenol.

I also ran across this, for locusts, in a review by Gibson and Hunter 2010):

"In locusts, a bacterial symbiotic complement of Pantoea agglomerans, Klebsiella spp. and Enterobacter sp. is required for the production of social cohesion pheromones ..."

Blomquist GJ et al. (2010) Pheromone production in bark beetles Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 40:699-712 doi:10.1016/j.ibmb.2010.07.013

Gitau CW, Bashford R, Carnegie AJ, Gurr GM (2013) A review of semiochemicals associated with bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) pests of coniferous trees: A focus on beetle interactions with other pests and their associates Forest Ecology and Management 297:1-14 doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2013.02.019

Gibson CM, Hunter MS (2010) Extraordinarily widespread and fantastically complex: comparative biology of endosymbiotic bacterial and fungal mutualists of insects Ecology Letters 13:223-234 doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01416.x

Wowwww excellent references Dr. Kirkendall :) thanks a lot :)

A few days ago I listened to a TED talk about human microbiota. These bacteria cells outnumber our own cells by 10:1. So, I am starting to think that the concept of "who is really doing this or that metabolic process" is one in which the barriers are not clear. When thinking about insect processes such as pheromone production, one may consider the biochemical level or the ecological level. At the ecological level, at least in my opinion, it is the insect that produces the pheromone, and at the biochemical level it may be as well too, unless the bacteria can exist as a free living organism, or at least be transmitted horizontally.     

Yes Dr. Ritzel.. All possibilities are to be considered !! The interactions in nature is too complex to look at it with a single view point !! 

Nice work. Good look

A little late answer, but I would suggest reading the review article by J. Dylan Shropshire & Seth R. Bordenstein "Speciation by Symbiosis: the Microbiome and Behavior" I think you can find extra answers there :)

Thank you Dr. Anne. Will go through the suggested review.

regards,

Vivek

All sorts of weird things can change an insect's ability to produce pheromones.  A few years ago I was raising Polyphemus moths.  I would put newly eclosed females in a mating cage and hang it outside in the evening.  But no males came to them.  After reading a bit, I found that unless the mating cage is full of red oak leaves, the female cannot let down her sex pheromones.  Once I learned this trick, no problem!  The females began calling after dusk and was able to attract at least one male in most cases.  The article in this excerpt from Science starts on p. 139.

https://www.ganino.com/games/Science/science%20magazine%201966-1967/root/data/Science%201966-1967/pdf/1967_v158_n3797/1722402.pdf

The role of bacteria in insect  behavior is a very interesting question and I think that there is a little research about that. I very like this topic

Today we know that bacteria from insects produce vitamins, aminoacid, enhance the immune system, confer resistance against pathogens (virus, parasitoids) etc, but little about behaviour.

As a part of my thesis I tried to evaluate the female choice in Anastrepha ludens to males fed with antibiotics. Unfortunately I did not finish the experiments

In your fly the male choose the female to mating ?. or Why the males are germ-free? and not the females ?

Are "sex pheromones" really produced by insects? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_sex_pheromones_really_produced_by_insects [accessed Oct 6, 2016].

Hi Victor,

please go through my recently published paper on this aspect. It may be of help to conduct your experiments.

regards,

Vivek