Byers, J.A. 1988a. Upwind flight orientation to pheromone
in western pine beetle tested with rotating windvane
traps. Journal of Chemical Ecology 14:189-198.
Abstract--
In the first trap design, a rotating windvane was connected to a 30
x 30 x 30-cm "square box" sticky trap enclosing a
synthetic pheromone source (exo-brevicomin, frontalin, and myrcene)
at the windvane's rotation axis. A second design used the windvane
attached to two tubular (19-cm-diam. x 30-cm) sticky traps each
suspended 120 cm from the same pheromone source and opposingly
aligned "downwind" and "upwind" of the windvane. Significantly more
beetles of each sex of Dendroctonus brevicomis LeC. (Coleoptera;
Scolytidae) were caught on the downwind side compared to the upwind
side of the square-box design. Even larger differences in catch, four
times more males and 3.4 times more females, were found on the
downwind tubular trap compared to the upwind one. The windvane trap
design provides rigorous evidence that insects, especially bark
beetles, orient upwind to pheromone sources (from at leat 1.2 m
downwind until reaching the source).
Chemical Ecology