Skip to content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Data From: Red flour beetle (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) response to volatile cues varies with strain and behavioral assay

Metadata Updated: November 10, 2020

Behavioral data for eight strains of red flour beetles in three behavioral assays and two commercial lures. The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), is a major pest of facilities where grain is processed because of its ability to find and colonize food resource patches. Traps baited with pheromone and kairomone lures are commonly used to monitor for the presence of insects in warehouses or flour mills, for example. However, two nonmutually exclusive components, environment and genetics, could influence insect responsiveness to volatiles, impacting the efficacy of monitoring. Intraspecific variation in attraction behavior to food and mates is largely unexplored in stored-product insects, but tapping into natural genetic variation could provide a baseline for identifying genetic mechanisms associated with finding resources. Here, we assess eight strains of T. castaneum for variation in response to kairomone- and pheromone-based lures using three behavioral assays: paired choice with no forced air flow, upwind attraction with forced air flow, and movement pattern in an arena with a single odor source. We find strain-specific responses to kairomones and pheromones and evidence for heritability in behavioral responses. However, environmental coefficients for behavioral responses to both lures are high, suggesting that environment, and its potential interaction with genotype, strongly influences behavioral outcomes in these assays. Furthermore, despite the different environmental conditions among the different behavioral assays, we find a correlation for volatile preference among the assays. Our results provide a baseline assessment of natural variation for preference to kairomone and pheromone lures and suggest that careful consideration of behavioral assay is key to understanding the mechanisms of attraction in these stored-product pests.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons CCZero

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 10, 2020
Metadata Updated Date November 10, 2020

Metadata Source

Harvested from USDA JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 10, 2020
Metadata Updated Date November 10, 2020
Publisher Agricultural Research Service
Maintainer
Identifier 63053678-83e3-4c2f-a5a2-88f0761bdd1b
Data Last Modified 2019-08-05
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 005:18
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Data Dictionary https://data.nal.usda.gov/dataset/data-red-flour-beetle-coleoptera-tenebrionidae-response-volatile-cues-varies-strain-and-behavioral-assay/resource/3c019e5c-29b5-4718-879e-93c4aa832a5a
Harvest Object Id 62e3ae62-c86f-4220-bacb-83eb8c31288c
Harvest Source Id d3fafa34-0cb9-48f1-ab1d-5b5fdc783806
Harvest Source Title USDA JSON
License https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Program Code 005:040
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash f64050c38a3c1608b43dfa6db5c2e8d0f18ad325
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov