Associations between diurnally varying male volatile emissions and allochrony in 2 sibling fruit fly species (Diptera: Tephritidae).

ABSTRACT: Allochrony can be an important premating isolating mechanism in insects but its physiological basis has seldom been determined. It operates at a diurnal scale to differentiate mating times of some closely related tephritid taxa. For example, the sympatric sibling species Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt) and Bactrocera neohumeralis (Hardy) mate at dusk and during the day, respectively. Rectal gland emissions of courting males function as sex pheromones in B. tryoni and recent evidence shows differences between the 2 species in many volatiles released from crushed rectal glands. Here we use gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to show that the head space compositions of whole male emissions of each species are generally but not invariably correlated with those of their respective rectal glands a

SUBMITTER: Castro-Vargas C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12269752 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature