According to lead author of the study, Dr Marinus De Jager of Stellenbosch University: «Since the discovery that the floral scent of these remarkable orchids mimics
female sex pheromones, many of these compounds have been made in the laboratory.
Yet
the female sex pheromone?
Not exact matches
After conducting a range of different experiments, the researchers discovered that some of the chemicals left behind by the
females, called
sex pheromones, were largely responsible for keeping the males awake.
With its odor - sensitive antennae, the moth senses a target smell — in this case,
female silkworm
sex pheromones — and walks toward it along the trackball, driving the robotic car.
In the lab, and in field experiments,
female brown rats readily enter trap boxes baited with the male brown rat's
sex pheromone.
Using microelectrodes, the researchers recorded the electrical activity of
pheromone - sensitive interneurons in male American cockroaches that relay signals of
female - producing
sex pheromones in the antennal lobe (functional homolog to the mammalian olfactory bulb) to higher - order centers.
A similar discovery in fruit flies, reported in an earlier independent study, which shows that a particular
sex pheromone enhances
female sexual behaviors and male aggression via separate neural circuits between the
sexes, suggests that a sexually distinct circuit may be a universal strategy for converting male
pheromone information into appropriate behavioral output.
Ever since a
pheromone secreted by a
female moth that attracts the opposite
sex was identified in 1959, scientists have pinned down numerous chemicals that affect behavior in a wide variety of animal species, from insects to mammals to humans.
Artificial illumination also misleads
female cabbage moths into skimping on production of their usual
sex pheromone lure.
Female insects emit
sex pheromones in order to attract potential mating partners.
The newest measure involves hijacking a
sex pheromone that male lampreys use to attract
females.
Many orchids are masters of sexual deception, tricking male insects into pollinating their flowers by producing chemicals that precisely mimic
female insects»
sex pheromones.
Sex pheromones wafting from a
female's skin drive males crazy, but how they work has long been a mystery.
To find out whether
sex hormones affect the number of neurons devoted to detecting
female pheromones, the researchers removed the testes from male mice and the ovaries from
females.
In moths,
females emit a species - specific
sex pheromone, consisting of a blend of biochemically related components, to which males are attracted.
In contrast, the Drosophila
sex pheromone cVA is detected by both
sexes and elicits dimorphic behavior by routing the signal via different third order neuronal circuits deep in the brains of males and
females [19].
In silk moths, this is achieved by only males expressing the receptor BmOR - 1 in their antenna, which detects the
female - specific
sex pheromone bombykol [18].
Thus diversity in receptor expression can explain differences in odor sensitivity, but does not appear to dictate whether
sex pheromones are differentially detected by males or
females.
Before then, they assumed that B. germanica didn't need a volatile
sex pheromone because the cockroaches live in close quarters where males could easily find
females, Schal says.
However the contraceptive pill tampers with this cycle, so your smell receptors aren't as responsive to the male (or
female)
pheromone, and may reduce your interest in
sex.