Moths develop sophisticated olfactory systems to sense the airborne chemical cues from the environment. Understanding the structural basis in the neuronal center is a fundamental neuroethological step. Little is known about the emerging crop pest Athetis dissimilis with regard to its morphology or its neuronal organizations. Through antibody staining and digital 3D modeling, we re-constructed the primary olfactory center—the antennal lobe of A. dissimilis. In the antennal lobes 68.8 ± 3.1 male glomeruli and 70.8 ± 1.0 female glomeruli were identified with obvious sexual dimorphism. In particular, male adults of A. dissimilis contain a macroglomerular complex (MGC) that consists of three subunits, while the female lobe has four relatively enlarged glomeruli at the entrance of the antennal nerve. Glomeruli were later clustered with deviation and variance, and referring to reported olfactory related receptor family genes in seven different moth species, we found that glomerular counts of these insects are better related to the sum of odorant receptor and ionotropic receptor numbers, suggesting olfactory receptors and ionotropic receptors may both involved in olfaction of Noctuidae moths.

飞蛾开发出复杂的嗅觉系统，以感知环境中的空气传播化学线索。了解神经元中枢的结构基础是神经行为学的基本步骤。对新兴农作物害虫知之甚少 麻疯树关于其形态或神经元组织。通过抗体染色和数字3D建模，我们重建了主要的嗅觉中心，即嗅球的触角。A. dissimilis。在触角裂片中，男性肾小球为68.8±3.1，女性肾小球为70.8±1.0，具有明显的性二态性。特别是A. dissimilis包含由三个亚基组成的巨球复合体（MGC），而雌性叶在触神经的入口处具有四个相对较大的肾小球。肾小球后来聚集在一起，具有偏差和方差，并参考报告的七个不同蛾类的嗅觉相关受体家族基因，我们发现这些昆虫的肾小球计数与气味受体和离子性受体总数之和更好，提示嗅觉受体和离子受体可能都参与了夜蛾的嗅觉。