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» Guide
The Pherobase Guide
What is The Pherobase?
The Pherobase is a database of pheromones and semiochemicals that
provides a guide to peer reviewed literature published on chemical signals involved
in chemical communication between living organisms. The
Pherobase is not biased towards any Taxa or any type of semiochemicals;
it simply covers all types of semiochemicals. So
here you will find sex pheromones, as well as all other categories of
semiochemicals.
What are pheromones and semiochemicals?
Pheromones and semiochemicals are signaling chemicals that organisms can detect in its environment, which may
modify its behaviour or its physiology. Semiochemicals are classified into two main
categories:
Pheromones:
The term pheromone was coined by Karlson and Lüscher in 1959, to
any substance secreted by an organism to the outside that causes specific
reactions in the receiving organism of the same species. Pheromones are
classified into several subcategories on the basis of the type of interaction
they mediate:
Sex pheromones: Chemicals that bring both sexes together (e.g. sex pheromone
in moths).
Aggregation pheromones: Chemicals that cause an increase in the density
of the animals in the vicinity of the pheromone source.
Trail pheromones: Chemicals secreted by workers of social insect to recruit
other individuals to food source or to a new colony site.
Alarm pheromones: Chemicals that stimulate escape or defense behaviour.
There are other types of pheromones, including; dispersal pheromones, maturation
pheromones and other pheromones.
Allelochemics:
This term was proposed by Whittaker in 1970 and it used to describe chemicals
that mediate interspecific interaction. Allelochemics are classified
into several subcategories:
Allomones: Chemical substances that benefits the emitter but not the receiver
(e.g. venom secreted by social wasps).
Kairomones: Chemical substances that benefits the receiver but not the
emitter (e.g. host location by beneficial insects).
Synomones: Chemicals that mediate mutualistic interaction, benefits both
the receiver and the emitter.
The Pherobase abbreviations:
In The Pherobase, we are mainly interested in the type of semiochemical (i.e. category) and source (emitter or the source)
of the semiochemicals, the abbreviations in The Pherobase reflect exactly
just this:
Category of the chemical signal:
A- Attractant; Al- Allomone; K- Kairomone; P-Pheromone; Sy- Synomone.
Source of the chemical signal:
F-Female; H-Host (could be of plant or animal origin); L- Lure (
substrate used to release compounds); M-Male; M&F-male and female; S-Solider; W-Worker; Q-Queen.
Explanation of the abbreviations:
(P) refer to pheromone, which is produced naturally by organism. The pheromone
can either produced by female (F), or male (M), or both
male and female (M&F) or worker (W) or soldier (S).
(A)
Attractant , chemicals that are not naturally produced by organism but found to be
attractive in either field or laboratory experiments. Please note that
the same compound can be (A and P). The
reason for that, some scientists discovered that certain compounds are
attractant (A) to certain insect and later other scientists discovered
that these compounds are produced naturally by this insect (P).
When the chemicals are discovered to be an attractant (A) the source
in this case is usually a synthetic lure (L).
(*) Astarstic next to the compound indicate that this compound is behaviouraly active. Some times scientists discovered that insects produce many
compounds but few of them are behaviourally attractive. This is reflected
in The Pherobase by the star sign (*).
(H) Stands for host volatile mainly of plant origin, but for medically
important insects, it is of animal origin as in the case of mosquitoes
and if this host volatile (H) is attractive to insects it is considered
a Kairomones (K).
The ratio of the compounds reported in the blend are given either as relative
ratio or as relative amount in (ng) or (µg).
Citation of The Pherobase:
This site was produced and made free for your convenience through
hundreds of hours of software programming, and data and we are working hard to keep it up to date. Therefore,
if you find The Pherobase useful to your research and your publications,
we do expect that you will cite "The Pherobase". Please use following reference when citing the Pherobase:
El-Sayed A.M. 2008. The Pherobase: Database of Insect Pheromones and Semiochemicals. <http://www.pherobase.com>.
View the molecules in 3D?
The compounds in The Pherobase are displayed both in 2D and in 3D. We used Jmol open source script to allow our visitors the pleasure to view the molecules in 3D. Visitors will be able to change the way the molecule is displayed by clicking the options next to the 3D molecule. There are more functions available if you right-click the mouse.
The Pherobase site map:
The Pherobase is classified into four main levels as illustrated in the figure below. The first level is the entry level (The Pherobase Index pages) from there you will be able to navigate your way down to the species level. Simply all you need to do is just click, click, and click (not more than this). The pherobase is extensively linked (you will hardly find a database on the web with these extensively linked web pages) and with just only using your mouse you can navigate from anywhere to everywhere.
The Pherobase - Site map - Click on each image to move to the corresponding page
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