Visual and olfactory cues for mate recognition in male pumpkin beetle, Aulacophora foveicollis
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Visual and olfactory cues for mate recognition in male pumpkin beetle, Aulacophora foveicollis Abhishek Mukherjee 1
&
Abhisek Makal 1
Received: 7 February 2020 / Accepted: 14 September 2020 # African Association of Insect Scientists 2020
Abstract Visual and olfactory mediated cues play a major role in mate selection in different groups of insects. This study aimed to observe if there is any role of mate color (under different wavelengths) and/or cuticular hydrocarbons in mate selection of Aulacophora foveicollis. In this study, visual cues and olfactory cues showed a vital role for male A. foveicollis to find mates. Males preferred (81%) orange (similar body colour) coloured glass model than white (52%) and black (49%) under the visible spectrum; whereas under the UV spectrum white coloured model was more preferred (77%) than orange (60%) and black (48%) coloured. In contrast, unresponsive males were very high though white coloured model was still preferred (36.67%) than orange (24.44%) or black (22.22%) coloured under IR spectrum. It was also observed that body surface waxes can play alone an olfactory cue for male mate selection (attraction was 67%) from short distance. Under the visual spectrum, when both visual and olfactory cues were presented, attraction of males toward all orange (93%), white (74%), and black (71%) coloured glass bead model increased. Even under UV and IR spectra attraction increased when body surface extract of female was applied on the glass models though the preference was more towards white coloured model than orange as previous. Male A. foveicollis showed less preference towards black colour. These works provide evidence that both visuals and olfactory cues can act separately as well as synergistically to find mates for male insects. These findings will be helpful for sustainable pest management program. Keywords Red pumkin beetle . Visible spectrum . Cuticular hydrocarbons . Mate choice
Introduction Aulacophora foveicollis Lucas (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) is a gregarious polyphagous pest of Cucurbitaceae (like pumpkin, bottle gourd, sponge gourd, etc) in India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam (Karmakar et al. 2016, 2017; Karmakar and Barik 2016; Khan et al. 2011; Rahaman and Prodhan 2007). Both adults and larvae of this pest cause damage to its host plants. Larvae pupate in the soil and before pupation (12–13 days) feed on young and healthy roots of the host plant. After completing the pupal stage (11–12 days), newly emerged adults rapaciously consume leaves, flowers and flower buds for 8– 9 weeks which kills branches and shoots and reduces crop production (Mukherjee et al. 2017). Numbers of literature
* Abhishek Mukherjee [email protected] 1
Maulana Azad College, 8, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Rd, Taltala, Kolkata, West Bengal 700013, India
indicates that A. foveicollis showed attraction toward volatiles and colour cues from host like Momordica cochinchinensis and Solena amplexicaulis plants (Karmakar et al. 2016, 2017; Karmakar and Barik 2016) which establish
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