Chemical Diversity of Scarab Beetle Pheromones and its Implication in Chemical Evolution

Abstract

Pheromones are species-specific chemical signals used by insects to communicate, to find a mate, and to identify their territory. In this paper, we analyzed the structural similarity of scarab beetle pheromones using the Tanimoto coefficient in an attempt to draw insights regarding their ecology, evolution and chemotaxonomy. The results showed a very diverse scarab beetle pheromone structure which provides further support to an earlier hypothesis regarding beetle pheromone evolution. In addition, it was found that the scarab beetle pheromone structure cannot be used as a species marker in chemotaxonomy owing to the observed high structural diversity.