Trail-following behavior is a key to ecological success of termites, allowing them to orient themselves between the nesting and foraging sites. This behavior is controlled by specific trail-following pheromones produced by the abdominal sternal gland occurring in all termite species and developmental stages. Trail-following communication has been studied in a broad spectrum of species, but the “higher” termites (i.e. Termitidae) from the subfamily Syntermitinae remain surprisingly neglected. To fill this gap, we studied the trail-following pheromone in six genera and nine species of Syntermitinae. Our chemical and behavioral experiments showed that (3Z,6Z,8E)-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol is the single component of the pheromone of all the termite species studied, except for Silvestritermes euamignathus. This species produces both (3Z,6Z)-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol and neocembrene, but only (3Z,6Z)-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol elicits trail-following behavior. Our results indicate the importance of (3Z,6Z,8E)-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol, the most widespread communication compound in termites, but also the repeated switches to other common pheromones as exemplified by S. euamignathus.

中文翻译：

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白蚁亚科Syntermitinae（Blattodea，Termitoidae，Termitidae）中的尾随信息素。

追踪行为是白蚁在生态上取得成功的关键，它可以使白蚁在筑巢和觅食之间定向。这种行为是由发生在所有白蚁物种和发育阶段的腹部胸骨产生的特定的尾随信息素控制的。已在广泛的物种中研究了追随性传播，但出乎意料的是，来自白蚁亚科的“较高”白蚁（即白蚁科）却被意外地忽略了。为了填补这一空白，我们研究了六个属和九个同生白蚁种类的尾随信息素。我们的化学和行为实验表明（3 Z，6 Z，8 E）-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol是所有研究的白蚁物种信息素的单一成分，除了白尾Sil（Silvestritermes euamignathus）。该物种同时产生（3 Z，6 Z）-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol和新膜，但仅产生（3 Z，6 Z）-dodeca-3,6-dien-1-ol引起-以下行为。我们的结果表明，（3 Z，6 Z，8 E）-dodeca-3,6,8-trien-1-ol是白蚁中最广泛传播的化合物的重要性，但也有重复向其他常见信息素转换的例子由S. euamignathus撰写。