Pheromones and Other Semiochemicals for Monitoring Rare and Endangered Species

As global biodiversity declines, biodiversity and conservation have become ever more important research topics. Research in chemical ecology for conservation purposes has not adapted to address this need. During the last 10-15 years, only a few insect pheromones have been developed for biodiversity and conservation studies, including the identification and application of pheromones specifically for population monitoring. These investigations, supplemented with our knowledge from decades of studying pest insects, demonstrate that monitoring with pheromones and other semiochemicals can be applied widely for conservation of rare and threatened insects. Here, I summarize ongoing conservation research, and outline potential applications of chemical ecology and pheromone-based monitoring to studies of insect biodiversity and conservation research. Such applications include monitoring of insect population dynamics and distribution changes, including delineation of current ranges, the tracking of range expansions and contractions, and determination of their underlying causes. Sensitive and selective monitoring systems can further elucidate the importance of insect dispersal and landscape movements for conservation. Pheromone-based monitoring of indicator species will also be useful in identifying biodiversity hotspots, and in characterizing general changes in biodiversity in response to landscape, climatic, or other environmental changes

Ankothrips , the most ancient extant thrips genus (Thysanoptera, Melanthripidae)

International audienceTwo fossil representatives of the extant genus Ankothrips are described from French amber, namely, the Late Cretaceous Ankothrips dupeae sp. nov., from Vendean amber, and the earliest Eocene Ankothrips deploegi sp. nov., from Oise amber. We discuss the differences between the middle Eocene Baltic amber genus Archankothrips and Ankothrips, concluding that the two genera are extremely similar with only one significant difference in male specimens. The disjunctive distribution of the extant species along with the presence of one Late Cretaceous species strongly suggest an Early Cretaceous origin for Ankothrips. The genus is therefore very ancient and has had a remarkable morphological stability for the last 94 million years. This situation is unique among the Cretaceous thrips, and rare among insects (only c. 3% of the genera in the well‐documented mid‐Cretaceous Burmese amber are still extant). We propose some hypotheses that could explain the stability of Ankothrips through time