This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Jacob D. Wickham to work with Dr. Yi Chen at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.
This project involves an investigation of the semiochemicals involved in the mating sequence of the Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB), Anoplophora glabripennis (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Lamiinae), an invasive species in the U.S. that is native to China and kills several species of angiospermous trees. The specific focus is the identification of the long-range female pheromones, as well as investigations to broaden understanding of the roles of host volatiles, male produced pheromones, and contact cues (which encode information for sex recognition and trail pheromones). To gain a better understanding of the evolutionary patterns of pheromone use in Cerambycidae, the PI proposes research into the mating sequence of ALB and investigations of another lamiine species, a cerambycine, and one species from the more ancestral Prioninae. All species in the proposal are of ecological and economic concern in China, and ALB is a serious threat to forests in the USA with infestations in Chicago, IL, NYC, NJ, and Worchester, MA. Long range mate attraction has been documented in four genera of Cerambycinae (male produced), while female long range pheromones have been documented for one species of the more ancestral Prioninae, and two other genera in the Vesperidae (Cerambycoidea). For most insects that use pheromones, females attract the males. Consistent with this evolutionary pattern and my results to date, the PI expects that ALB females also use a long-range sex pheromone (although male pheromones also play a role). He conducted extensive laboratory investigations into the detection and identification of long-range, female pheromones and host tree attractants for ALB. This involves recording antennal signals of males using gas chromatography coupled with an electroantennographic detector (GC-EAD), followed by GC-MS identification, lab bioassay and field bioassay. His research will involve identification of the unknown unsaturated hydrocarbons, GC-EAD recordings of activated female extracts, laboratory bioassays using both activated and crude extracts, and field trapping with synthetic pheromone components. The expected results are that these new compounds have dual roles as precursors to volatile long-range female pheromone, and the compounds themselves encode more information regarding mating status (rather than sex recognition) for male ALB. The expected results from investigations of chemical ecology of other related species will show similar patterns of mate attraction and recognition.
The study of the signaling mechanisms and mating sequence of ALB and a representative species from other subfamilies can broaden our knowledge of the basic biology of this large and important group of insects, of which only fragments of 0.2% of the world?s 35,000 species? chemical ecology is known. Furthermore, ALB poses a serious threat to the health and sustainability of North American forests, and long-range attractants would likely play a pivotal role in the successful eradication of this invasive forest insect. In New York City, over 100,000 trees have been treated with the systemic insecticide imidacloprid, which has been detected in groundwater on Long Island. IPM using attractants could limit insecticide use. The newly discovered infestation in Worchester, MA (August 2008) direly needs chemical attractants as a monitoring tool in the US government?s eradication program. In China, ALB is a serious pest of poplar and willow plantations, which are grown for energy biomass (potentially reducing coal consumption by 20-30%, and help combat global warming), and as windbreaks in China?s massive anti-desertification program.
