Year: 2022

CASTRATI DEFICIENT. “Since the production of many male pheromones in mammals is under androgen hormone control, the chemical profiles of intact and castrated males could also be compared. This ‘subtractive approach’ was used recently to track down candidate molecules for a male goat pheromone. Similar approaches have also been used to identify large molecule pheromones in male mice, such as the endocrine-gland-secreting peptide 1 (ESP1) from the tear gland and the major urinary protein (MUP20), known as darcin.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

MOUSE TEAR GLAND MARKER. “Darcin provides a good example of the distinction between pheromones and individual odours. Darcin is secreted in the urine that dominant male mice use to mark territory signposts. Females, attracted by volatile urine pheromones, sniff the urine into their second nose, the vomeronasal organ (VNO), where darcin, an involatile pheromone, is detected. Darcin prompts the female to remember the location of the signpost and also the individual odour of the male. She will seek out the male territory owner and mate with him, recognizing him by his individual odour.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

GLANDULAR EXUDATES. “Pheromones are typically secreted by specialized glands or tissues. For example, female moths have a pheromone gland at the end of their abdomen. Rodents have a wide variety of skin glands as well as large and small pheromone molecules delivered in their urine.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

MODIFIED EXUDATES. “In some species, pheromones are derived or modified from other sources: tiger moth caterpillars sequester poisons from their milkweed food plants and as adults, males metabolise some of these pyrrolizidine alkaloid poisons into volatile pheromones, attractive to females and indicative of the size of poison gift they will transfer along with sperm at mating. Tropical euglossine orchid bee males collect their pheromones as a ‘take-away’ from a species-specific set of orchid flowers.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

OUTSOURCED EXUDATES. “Pheromones may also be produced by the activity of bacterial symbionts as in the case of, for example, guaiacol (2-methyoxyphenol), which affects phase-change in Locusta migratoria.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION IS SOURCE AGNOSTIC. “A very wide range of molecules are used as pheromones, covering every chemical dimension of structure, functional group, size and combination, and limited only by the range of molecules organisms can produce or obtain. This range reflects the ways that molecules evolve into pheromone signals. Any molecule can potentially evolve into a pheromone.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONAL MODIFICATIONS. “The molecules used by a given kind of animal can often be understood in terms of function, habitat, likely evolution, and phylogenetic history. For example, ant alarm pheromones are often related to that species’ venoms, and are small volatile molecules such as formic acid (MW 46), quick to reach fellow nestmates and to rapidly disperse when the alert is over.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

ADAPTED FOR SITUATION. “Hyena anal gland secretions contain relatively involatile high molecular weight molecules for long lasting marks for territory marking. Underwater, pheromones can be small as the unusual amino acid L-kynurenine used by masu salmon as a female sex pheromone or as large as proteins, if charged and soluble. For example, the sex pheromones of the sea slug Aplysia are the proteins attractin, enticin, seductin, and temptin.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION. “During speciation, changes in sex pheromones commonly form one basis of pre-mating isolation. This may explain the chemosignal differences in major urinary proteins and androgen binding proteins in Mus musculus subspecies in hybrid zones.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn

DETECTION BY CHEMORECEPTORS. “Across the animal kingdom, as a rule, pheromones are detected by chemoreceptors of the olfactory system(s). In both insects and vertebrates, olfactory sensory neurons which carry the same chemoreceptor converge on the same glomerulus.” https://lnkd.in/drx5_4e View in LinkedIn