Trail chemical

Many species use chemical trails for orientation to food sources and new nest sites some, but not all, of these species also use components of the trail to stimulate recruitment. 

Many species utilizing trunk-trails employ mass recruitment, including species of Pogonomyrmex (HOlldobler, 1976), Pheidole (Hdlldobler and 

A more sophisticated system is available to the leaf-cutting ant Atta cephalotes 

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The thrust of much of stratospheric research has been to understand the production and loss of stratospheric ozone. The chemical trail in this process has been marked in Figure 6 as the top four arrows. The production of ozone is almost exclusively by this mechanism ... 

Stingless bees lay chemical trails with mandibular gland constituents which have been identified as normal aliphatic alcohols or monoterpene aldehydes. Trigona spinipes generates a trail with a mixture of 2-heptanol, 2-undecanol, and 2-tridecanol, and it has been possible to successfully lay artificial trails with these alcohols (136). Trail following in workers of Trigona subterranea is released by citral (130), the stereoisomers of which are also utilized as alarm pheromones and defensive compounds. Such pheromonal parsimony appears to be especially typical of eusocial bees and ants. 

Insects communicate with chemicals. These chemicals are called pheromones, derived from the Greek words pherin, to transfer, and hormone, to excite. Perhaps you have seen a line of ants, all following the same invisible trail across a floor or a concrete walkway. One ant has found a food source and has laid down a chemical, a trail pheromone, on its return to the nest. Other ants then follow this chemical trail back to the food source. Insects also use pheromones extensively to attract members of the opposite sex for mating. Pheromones must be volatile enough to readily enter the gas phase so that they can be detected by the insect s antennae. This requires them to be relatively small organic compounds. Some examples of pheromones are provided in the accompanying table. 

What does it tell you about the function of chemical trails in the lives of the termites ... 

Molecular structure is also central for those molecules used as a means of communication. Examples of chemical communication occurring in humans are the conduction of nerve impulses across synapses, the control of the manufacture and storage of key chemicals in cells, and the senses of smell and taste. Plants and animals also use chemical communication. For example, ants lay down a chemical trail so that other ants can find a certain food supply. Ants also warn their fellow workers of approaching danger by emitting certain chemicals. 

Tlie increasingly stringent environmental requirements demand new catalytic synthetic processes as does the necessity to produce tlie novel types of organic compounds generated in bioniolecular research as active molecules or taigets. Enzyme-catalyzed chemical trails-... 

Fig. 9.4 Following a chemical trail mimic by 7. longicomis. Visualized trail and upwardly-directed trail following. A trail mimic was created by releasing seawater, scented with copepod odors. The trail on the left is the undisturbed trail. The disturbed chevron-dotted trails on the right show how the trail structure changes after the male copepod /. longicornis follows odor trail. The copepod is located at upper end of disturbance in trail (Yen et al. 2004). Copyright CRC Press...

Fig. 9.6 Average number of trail follows executed by 7. longicornis males for the chemical-trail mimics of T. longicornis female, T. longicornis male, Acartia hudsonica female, and an unscented control. Error bars refer to the standard error of mean trail follows out of 25 trail encounters from two experiments. Trail following data were subjected to a chi-square test of associations between trail type and following frequency. Chi Square = 24.79, degrees of freedom = 3, p-value < 0.001 (i.e. there is an association between the frequency of follows and the trail type), n = 25 (which refers to number of trail encounters per experiment). Statistical analysis was conducted using SigmaStat 3.5 (Port Richmond, CA)...

Farkas, S. R., and Shorey, H. H., 1972, Chemical trail-following by flying insects. A mechanism for orientation to a distant odor source. Science, 178 67. 

Peterson, S. C., Chemical trail marking and following by caterpillars of Malacosoma neustria, J. Chem. Ecol., 14. 815-824 (1988). 

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