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.

GUIDOBALDI F; BRATOVICH C; MAY-CONCHA IJ; GARCIA MAILEN; N BURRONI; GUERENSTEIN PG

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

ISCE, ALAEQ

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