THE LABORATORY-FIELD EXPERIMENTAL INTERFACE: TESTING AND MEASURING ATTRACTION TO ODORANTS IN THE LABORATORY AIMING AT DEVELOPING AN ODOR-LURE, A STUDY ON KISSING BUGS

FABIO GUIDOBALDI; MAILEN GARCÍA; IRVING J. MAY CONCHA; PABLO G. GUERENSTEIN; CELINA BRATOVICH; NORA BURRONI

Foz do Iguazu

Congreso; 32nd Meeting of the International Society for Chemical Ecology and 4th Meeting of the Latin American Association for Chemical Ecology; 2016

ISCE-ALAEQ

Candidate odorattractants are often tested in the laboratory to develop odor lures to attractinsects in the field. However, sometimes, good attractants developed in thelaboratory are not efficient in the field. This could be due to many reasons,including the use of a non-ideal laboratory experimental design. Differentexperimental designs are used to estimate attraction in insects. Moreover, fora certain experimental design, different variables are quantified. Using triatominesand a dual-choice trap-olfactometer, we asked which behavioral variables arebest to predict capture in the laboratory (ultimately, we aim at asking whichtests and variables are best to predict capture in the field). Theolfactometers included an insect release-zone and, on the opposite side, twocapture-tubes (emanating control and hostodor) connected to the arena frombelow. The insects could let themselves drop into the capture-tubes(triatomines let themselves drop when sensing hostodor from below). Using avideo camera, we recorded the behavior of individual bugs during theexperiments. The video recordings were analyzed to measure variables that areused to estimate attraction in the literature. Some of the variables measuredwere: first choice, and position at the end of the (5-to-30 min) experiment.Two stimuli were tested: a mouse and a synthetic host odor blend, and weanalyzed the degree of discrimination between the stimuli according to thedifferent variables mentioned comparing to the variable ?capture?. Whereas?capture? indicated that the synthetic mixture is a worse attractant thanmouse, the other variables suggested little or no difference in the responsesto the two stimuli. Therefore, using those other variables the response reacheda maximum with a non-ideal stimulus, thus making difficult to improve thesynthetic stimulus. Our results suggest that certain behavioral variables usedin the literature are not adequate to extrapolate results on attraction tolaboratory capture.