Research On Effect Of Female’s Glow And Sex Pheromone In Courtship Of Firefly Pyrocoelia Pectoralis (Coleoptera:Lampyridae)

According to the previous findings, we consider that the female of Pyrocoelia pectoralis not only use glow signal(physical signal), but also use sex pheromone signal (chemical signal). In this paper we confirmed the conjecture by field experiment and we explore the effect of the female of P. pectoralis who use the two signals to courtship. And we had a preliminary study of compounds of the sex pheromone by GC-EAD and GC-MS.We found that the males of P. pectoralis approached to the female of none glow signal from the down wind in the wild from our field experiments. The behaviors of males of P. pectoralis were the same with the insects who use the sex pheromone signal for courtship, which was proved that the female of P. pectoralis use the sex pheromone signal in courtship. And the effective distance is about25m of the sex pheromone signal in our field experiments.Our experiment of the effect of the female of P. pectoralis use the glow signal and sex pheromone signal in courtship proved that first the sex pheromone signal plays the leading role of the courtship of P. pectoralis, second the glow signal and the sex pheromone signal can make each other more effective at0.5m distance, third the males may use one of the two signals or both of the two signals, fourth no matter what signal the males detected, they may approach the female rapidly, fifth the distance is farther(<25m) the gradient of signal is more clear and the approaching speed of male is faster, sixth the glow signal not only attracts the male, but also be used for locating the females by males of P. pectoralis.There are four GC-EAD responses of male to volatiles from female of P. pectoralis, and they maybe include seven compounds. The compounds of sex pheromone need for further study.