IDENTIFICATION OF A NOVEL PLANT-DERIVED ATTRACTANT FOR LEAF-CUTTING ANTS

ALMA MARINA; PATRICIA FERNANDEZ; PERRI DAIANA; BUTELER, MICAELA

ANAIS DA ACADEMIA BRASILEIRA DE CIENCIAS.

ACAD BRASILEIRA DE CIENCIAS

Lugar: Rio de Janeiro; Año: 2019

0001-3765

Leaf-cutting ants (LCA) belonging to the genera Atta and Acromyrmex (OrderHymenoptera, Family Formicidae, Tribe Attini) (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990) arerecognized as key herbivores and ecosystem engineers (Farji-Brener and Werenkraut 2015), but also cause large economic losses in numerous crops (Montoya-Lerma et al.2012). The most commonly used control strategy to manage this pest is the use of toxic baits, which typically consist of a citrus pulp attractant with soybean oil, and sulfluramid or fipronil as the main compounds currently under large-scale use (dos Santos et al. 2017). However, citrus extracts are not suitable for all species of LCA (Lima et al. 2003), andgiven their cognitive abilities, LCA can learn to avoid toxic baits by associating the attractant with the toxic compound in the bait (North et al. 1999). In such cases the workers stop the harvesting initially accepted resources, a phenomenon known as `delayed avoidance´, which can be prevented by changing the attractant in which the pesticide is applied (Herz et al. 2008; Saverschek et al. 2010). Furthermore, there is great interest in facilitating the encounter of the bait by scout workers by adding attractive odours such as ant pheromones or plant-derived compounds (Carlos et al. 2010; Tatagiba-Araujo et al. 2012). In this study, we evaluated attractiveness of heptyl butyrate, a volatile compound naturally found in fresh apples and plums (Carle et al. 1987; Mattheis et al. 1991). Heptyl butyrate is commercially available as it is used in the food and fragrance industry. It is also used as an attractant for other hymenopteran insects, Vespula ssp. wasps (Buteler et al. 2017), making it an interesting candidate with potential as attractant to LCA. Here we investigated its attractiveness alone and coupled with food resources, at different doses andfound it to be as attractive as orange pulp, the most commonly used attractant in toxic baits (dos Santos et al. 2017).