Researchers at the University of British Columbia have shed new light on how mountain pine beetles produce an important pheromone called trans-verbenol, which could aid in efforts to better predict outbreaks.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have shed new light on how mountain pine beetles produce an important pheromone called trans-verbenol, which could aid in efforts to better predict outbreaks.
In recent years, mountain pine beetles have destroyed more than 25 million hectares of pine forests in western North America. In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have uncovered previously unknown reservoirs of trans-verbenol in the bodies of juvenile mountain pine beetles.
“Trans-verbenol is a pheromone that female mountain pine beetles use to attract other insects to a suitable host tree and coordinate large-scale attacks,” said Christine Chiu, lead author of the study and graduate student at the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC. “It was previously assumed that adult females produced trans-verbenol by converting toxic compounds found in the resin of new pine trees they landed on into pheromones. In this study, we found that the beetles have some secrets: they actually accumulate and store trans-verbenol during their larval and pupal stages in the brood trees as they grow.”
Female beetles burrow into the bark of healthy pine trees to mate and lay eggs, where their developing larvae gradually gut the tree. Chiu analyzed beetle specimens collected in British Columbia at different life stages using gas chromatography.
Continue reading at University of British Columbia (UBC).
Image via Christine Chiu - University of British Columbia (UBC).
