Schistocerca americana

Lee, J. C. and Bemays, E. A., Food tastes and toxic effects associative learning by the polyphagous grasshopper Schistocerca americana (Drury) (Orthoptera Acrididac), Ariim. Behav., 39, 163, 1990. 

Bemays, E. A., Relationship between deterrence and toxicity of plant secondary compounds for the grasshopper Schistocerca americana, J. Chem. Ecol., 17, 2519, 1991. 

Grunshaw, J.P., Guermouche, H., Guermouche, S Jago, N.D., Jullien, R., Knowles, E. and Perez, F. (1990). Chemical taxonomic studies of cuticular hydrocarbons in locusts of the Schistocerca americana complex (Acridae Cyrtacanthacridinae) chemical relationships between New World and Old World species../. Chem. Ecol., 16, 2835-2858. 

Figure 2. Distribution of octopamine throughout selected parts of the central nervous system of Schistocerca americana gregaria.

Insects smell with their antennae. While the olfactory systems of different insects bear many similarities, they are by no means identical. For sake of concreteness I will here mainly focus on the anatomy and electro-physiology of locust Schistocerca Americana). This species has been studied for a long time, in particular in the group of Gilles Laurent at the California Institute of Technology. The locust has on the order of... 

A number of studies with widely diverse species have established that the major site of cuticular hydrocarbon synthesis is within the cells associated with the epidermal layer or the peripheral fat body, particularly the oenocytes. In Schistocerca gregaria, Diehl (1973, 1975) separated the oenocyte-rich peripheral fat body from the central fat body tissue and observed the highest rate of hydrocarbon synthesis in the oenocyte-rich peripheral fat body. In Tenebrio molitor, Romer (1980) demonstrated that isolated oenocytes efficiently and specifically incorporated [14C]acetate into hydrocarbon. Similar studies in Periplaneta americana (Nelson, 1969), Sarcophaga bullata (Arnold and Regnier, 1975), and Musca domestica (Dillwith et al., 1981) demonstrated that hydrocarbon synthesis occurs primarily in the epidermal tissue. 

It has now been demonstrated that walking insects locate an upwind odor source by at least three mechanisms. First, perception of an attractant chemical releases upwind orientation in certain species of flies Drosophila - Flugge, 1934), moths B. mori - Schwinck, 1954,1955), beetles Ipsconfusus - Wood and Bushing, 1963 Dendroctonusfrontalis - Payne eta/., 1916 Leptinotarsa desemlineata - De Wilde et al., 1969 Visser and Nielsen, 1977 Trogoderma variable - Shapas and Burkholder, 1978), locusts (Schistocerca gregaria -Kennedy and Moorhouse, 1969), cockroaches P. americana - Rust et al., 1976) and ants Novomessor - Hdlldobler et al., 1978). 

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