Insect contact chemosensory sensilla

Insect chemosensory organs have been differentially developed for taste and olfactory sensing. The contact and the distant chemosensory sensilla are responsible for nonvolatile and volatile chemical reception, respectively. The CHCs with long carbon chains are non-volatile, and therefore thought to be received by taste sensilla (Ebbs and Amrein, 2007). However, because of their insolubility in water, it was very difficult to obtain response recordings to them from taste sensilla. Success was recently obtained, however, in Drosophila melanogaster, where a male-specific CHC as a sex-pheromone inhibiting male-male courtship was found to stimulate the bitter taste receptor neuron within the... 

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