Signals and cues in death recognition: a quantitative review

Jizhe Shi, Austin Merchant, Qinghua Wang, Xuguo Zhou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Chemicals associated with death are utilized by insects and other animals to mediate their responses to dead conspecifics. For the past decades, there has been an influx of publications associated with death and death-related chemicals, culminating in the introduction of Evolutionary Thanatology in 2018, an interdisciplinary field of study focusing on the phenomena of death and dying across animal taxa. Integrated and interdisciplinary research of chemicals involved in death recognition plays an important role in the formation and growth of this exciting new field from biological and evolutionary perspectives. Here, combining evidence-based Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) with a keyword co-occurrence analysis, a quantitative review of terminology used in studies of chemicals associated with dead conspecifics was carried out. Given that excessive use of newly coined or improvised terminology and overlapping terms within and between research fields may hinder the growth of this emerging field, we suggest limiting the introduction of novel terminology if existing terms can cover new findings among death-related chemicals. Considering that the field of Evolutionary Thanatology is still in its infancy, death cue might be a term-of-choice due to the lack of information on the mechanistic, functional, and evolutionary bases of chemicals associated with dead conspecifics. A standardized/streamlined set of terminology not only affords the opportunity for comparative studies across broad taxa to trace the evolutionary histories of death-related chemicals, but also facilitates the development and growth of Evolutionary Thanatology as a whole.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)240-249
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Plant Protection
Volume49
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • death chemical
  • death cue
  • evolutionary thanatology
  • terminology

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Plant Science
  • Horticulture
  • Agronomy and Crop Science
  • Insect Science

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