Possible Presence of Pheromone in Mating Behavior of the Pine Sawyer Monochamus saltuarius Gebler (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

The mating behavior of the pine sawyer, Monochamus saltuarius, is composed of two phases. The first phase is the female approach to pheromone-releasing males. When bioassayed by T-tube olfactometer, the female was moved toward the male and hexane extract of the male. The second phase is the male mounted the female to copulate after perceiving the contact pheromone being on the female body surface. When the hexane extract of the female body surface was applied onto a glass rod (dummy), the male showed the mating behavior to the dummy. The component of female body surface extract fractionated using a silicic acid column elicited mating behaviors of the males, and the other component by ether fraction was showed a high copulatory attempt. This study was discussed two-step functions of the pheromones in the beetle mating behavior.