%0 Journal Article
%T The odor of origin: kinship and geographical distance are reflected in the marking pheromone of male beewolves (Philanthus triangulum F., Hymenoptera, Crabronidae)
%A Martin Kaltenpoth
%A Johannes Kroiss
%A Erhard Strohm
%J BMC Ecology
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6785-7-11
%X We analyzed the sex pheromone composition of male European beewolves (Philanthus triangulum F., Hymenoptera, Crabronidae) from eight different locations across Central Europe (six in Germany, one in England, and one in Italy). The pheromone constitutes a complex blend of various long-chain hydrocarbons (alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, ketones, and a carbon acid). We demonstrate that pheromone composition differs significantly among distant populations (regional scale), among subpopulations (local scale) and between families within subpopulations. The differences in the pheromone blend are positively correlated with geographical distances as might be expected according to an isolation-by-distance model. On a local scale, family membership has a larger effect on pheromone composition than subpopulation affiliation, while the reverse is true for the regional scale.Our results show that male pheromones can contain information on both kinship and geographical origin that may be used by females to choose adaptively among potential mates on the basis of their genetic distance.In many animals, sexual signals vary with the degree of kinship as well as with geographical distribution. This has been shown for numerous species with acoustical courtship signals [1-3], but also for several taxa with sex pheromones [4-8]. Previous studies on chemical signals, however, have focused on pheromones produced by females; evidence for geographical variation in male sex pheromones is largely lacking [but see [9-12]].Since there is usually a conflict of interest between the sexes [13], male sex pheromones are expected to underlie completely different selective pressures than female pheromones [14,15]. Male sexual signals often enable females to choose adaptively among potential mates by providing information on species affiliation and mate quality [16-19]. If males vary in their ability to provide essential resources to the females [20,21] or in their parasite or disease load [22-24] and such d
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6785/7/11