EVOLUTION OF SEX PHEROMONE SYSTEM AMONG CALOGLYPHUSMITES.

Yasumasa Kuwahara, Naoki Mori, Kiminori Shimizu, Chihiro Tanaka andMitsuya Tsuda
Division of Applied Life Sciences, and of Science and Technology ofRegional Environments, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University,Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-01 JAPAN

Female sex pheromones of following 4 Caloglyphus mites (Acarina:Acaridae); C. sp. 1, C. polyphyllae, C. rodriguezi andC. sp. 2, have been identified as epoxyneral, b-acaridial, undecaneand rosefuran, respectively. Those are contained not only in females butalso in males and nymphs. Its content-ratio (female:male) and male’s capabilityto locate females increase in the following order; C. sp. 1 (1:1),C. polyphyllae (3:1), C. rodriguezi (6:1) and C.sp.2 (8:1). We, therefore, suppose that pheromones at various developing stagesare obtained, from the primitive (1:1) species to the advanced (8:1) one.In order to obtain their phylogenetic relationships, nucleotide sequencesof the mitochondrial cytochrome-oxidase-subunit-I gene fragments (453bp)were determined on 3 species (C. polyphyllae, C. sp. 1 andC. sp. 2). The inferred phylogeny using the maximum parsimony methodcoincided to the hypothetical trend of the pheromone evolution. As a result,it was concluded that the mite sex pheromone have evolved from a commonglandular compound functioning as male’s sexual excitant into the sex linkedspecific one with biological activity.