Electrophysiological Responses of Apis cerana and A.mellifera to Cuticular Hydrocarbons in Vespa soror
Cuticular hydrocarbons are important informative compounds for intraspecies and interspecies recognition in in-sects,and it is important to investigate the composition of cuticular hydrocarbons in hornet Vespa soror and the electrophysi-ological responses of the honeybees to understand the chemical communication between honeybees and hornets.In this study,we first analyzed the types and relative contents of cuticular hydrocarbons in the wings and legs of V.soror by or-ganic solvent extraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS),and then we analyzed the re-sponses of eastern bees(Apis cerana)and western bees(A.mellifera)to the cuticular hydrocarbons of V.soror by the elec-troantennogram(EAG)technique.The results showed that the cuticular hydrocarbons of V.soror were consisted of 31 hy-drocarbons from C23-C31,of which 26 were alkanes and 5 were alkenes,with the highest contents of methyl-branched al-kanes,and the relative contents of them in the wings and legs were 58.72%and 71.44%,respectively.Both A.cerana and A.mellifera showed significant EAG responses to the cuticular hydrocarbons of V.soror(P<0.001),and the relative EAG response values of A.cerana were significantly higher than those of A.mellifera(P<0.05).This suggested that A.cerana were more sensitive to the cuticular hydrocarbons of V.soror than A.mellifera,which might be related to the predatory and antipredator relationship formed by the two species through their long term co-evolutionary process.
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