Stink bugs use pheromones to attract potential mates or to communicate to others when they have found food. Researchers from Virginia Tech have discovered new insights into this chemical exchange between bugs, which can be used for developing alternative pest controls.
“We have gained a deeper understanding of how stink bugs synthesize pheromones, and this knowledge may allow us to produce pheromones in expendable food crops – also called ‘trap crops’ – to lure the bugs away from cash crops,” said Dorothea Tholl, a professor of biological sciences in the College of Science.
These alternatives are environmental friendly and sustainable when compared to conventional insecticides and can save farmers millions worth of money. Crops such as grapes, sweet corn, and apples have been suffering due to the invasive brown marmorated stink bug since 2004 in Virginia. Several other bugs are affecting crops like cabbage, beans and soybeans too.
Tholl is quite curious about the chemical communication between organisms and has studies this chemical language and its evolution in insects. Tholl and her team investigated the enzyme that produce the pheromones in collaboration with colleagues at Virginia Tech and other national and international institutions. The research was published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
“Our recent paper provides valuable insight into our understanding of how insects synthesize complex sesquiterpene compounds that are typically used as pheromones. The work could pave the way in the future for plants to manufacture insect pheromones, which could be utilized in pest surveillance and pest management strategies, such as attract and kill,” said Thomas Kuhar, who is a professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The research showed that stink bugs possess their own enzymatic machinery to make pheromones without having to receive them from symbiotic microbes or the host plant. Jason Lancaster from Knoxville, Tennessee, a recent biological sciences Ph.D. graduate from Tholl’s lab, employed next-generation sequencing to identify and characterize the first enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of the harlequin bug pheromone compound.
“Pheromones for thousands of insects are known, but very little is known about the synthesis of the pheromones. This paper focuses on terpene derived pheromones from the harlequin stink bug Murgantia histrionica and encompasses many years of research. Besides the development of dead-end trap crops, this research may allow establishing “RNAi interference” type gene silencing mechanisms to disrupt the pheromone production of the insect,” said Lancaster.