Chemical ecology of cerambycids

Given their popularity with naturalists and collectors, and in some cases their economic importance, it is remarkable how little is known about the basic biology of most cerambycid species. This is particularly true of cerambycid semiochemistry, which remains largely unexplored. In a 1999 review of cerambycid mate location and recognition, Hanks exhaustively reviewed the available data, which suggested that pheromones that act over long distances appeared to be uncommon in the Cerambycidae (Hanks 1999). Similarly, in a 2004 review of cerambycid chemical ecology, Allison et al. (2004) stated that most cerambycids did not use sex or aggregation pheromones. However, studies over the past decade have shown that, if anything, cerambycid species that do not use some form of attractant pheromones actually may be in the minority. Even more surprising is the fact that careful studies of a number of economically important 196 species (e.g., the Monochamus and Megacyllene species, reviewed in Hanks 1999) had concluded that these species did not use long-range attractant pheromones, whereas we now have abundant evidencefrom multiple species in the ve major subfamilies-that the use of volatile pheromones is widespread within the family and that these compounds are often powerful attractants of one or both sexes.