Cabbage Butterfly defensive hairs.

[Woody Woods]

We hit 70 today (west of Boston), without a butterfly to be seen, though
there were four species of dipterans-- dunno what, but the numbers were
impressive-- and numerous moths.

About this quote from the Science News article about "mayolenes" in P.
rapae: "However, the final compounds more closely resembles substances
produced in plants' injury responses than in other caterpillar defenses, say
the researchers."-- have a look at the June issue (v. 42) of Integrative and
Comparative Biology (formerly American Zoologist), which includes several
papers examining parallels between plant and animal responses to different
challenges. I can't help but wonder how many more of these parallels are
waiting to be found, but haven't been yet because of the traditional divide
between plant and animal physiology research.

Woody

*************************************************
William A. Woods Jr.
Department of Biology
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125

Lab: 617-287-6642
Fax: 617-287-6650
*************************************************

> From: Michael Gochfeld <gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Organization: EOHSI
> Reply-To: gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU
> Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 21:02:10 -0500
> To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Cabbage Butterfly defensive hairs.
> 
> I just saw this Science News version of an interesting paper. from  of
> May 11, 2002; Vol. 161, No. 19 . I thought I'd pass it on.
> Pieris rapae and both species of Colias were flying today in Somerset,
> NJ  when the air temp reached 64F.
> 
> MIKE GOCHFELD
> 
============================================================================
==> =
> 
> No Tickling: Common caterpillars deploy defensive hair
> Caterpillars of the European cabbage butterfly, which has invaded most
> of North America, turn out to bristle with a kind of
> defense system that scientists have not documented before.
> Picture online is POOR!!!!!!
> YUK. Repellant droplets on hairs of the European cabbage butterfly
> caterpillar send an ant into a cleaning frenzy (inset).
> The caterpillars sprout hairs that carry droplets of a novel predator
> repellent derived from a fatty acid, says Thomas
> Eisner of Cornell University. Ants tend to avoid the caterpillars or
> spend an unusual amount of time cleaning themselves
> after contact, Eisner and his colleagues report in an upcoming issue of
> the Proceedings of the National Academy of
> Sciences.
> "Here's something new about a species that's dirt-common," marvels
> entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois
> at Urbana-Champaign. Eisner's team named the oddball repellents
> mayolenes after her. A footnote in the paper clarifies that
> this is an honor.
> The repellent-dotted species, Pieris rapae, hitchhiked to Canada in 1860
> from its native Eurasia and North Africa. The
> adult butterfly's chalky wings, with a dark spot or two, have become a
> familiar sight coast to coast in the United States.
> The repellent's defensive powers could easily have sped the species'
> proliferation, Eisner says.
> Soft and slow, caterpillars often turn to chemical warfare, he explains.
> For example, some carry poisons that their fathers
> transferred to their mothers along with sperm. Other caterpillars, when
> attacked, regurgitate the remains of noxious
> plants.
> Researchers had previously documented defensive glandular hairs in
> beetle pupae, and entomologists have speculated that the
> little droplets atop the hairs of the cabbage butterfly caterpillars
> might also offer some kind of protection. Eisner says
> he knows of no previous attempts to test the idea.
> In one behavioral experiment, his team confined a predator, an ant
> species from the Northeast, with a European cabbage
> butterfly caterpillar or a mealworm of similar size. The ants probed the
> caterpillars much less often than they poked at
> mealworms. In another experiment, the scientists washed the caterpillars
> with solvent and then offered them to the ant. The
> deterrent effect had disappeared.
> To look into the chemistry behind the deterrence, the researchers
> collected droplets from hundreds of caterpillars. The
> deterrent chemicals fell apart easily when exposed to heat and acids, so
> the team developed novel techniques. The
> researchers learned that mayolenes are derived from a common fatty
> substance, linolenic acid. However, the final compounds
> more closely resembles substances produced in plants' injury responses
> than in other caterpillar defenses, say the
> researchers.
> Eisner says that he himself can't sniff anything repellant in the
> mayolenes, much to Berenbaum's relief. "If they're named
> after me, I sincerely hope they don't smell bad," she says.
> 
> References:
> Smedley, S.R., . . . and T. Eisner. 2002. Mayolenes: Labile defensive
> lipids from the glandular hairs of a caterpillar
> (Pieris rapae). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99(May
> 14):6822-6827. Abstract available at
> http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/102165699v1.
> 
> Further Readings:
> Milius, S. 1998. How bright is a butterfly? Science News 153(April
> 11):233-235. Available at
> http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/4_11_98/bob1.htm.
> 
> For pictures of the adult European Cabbage White butterfly, see
> http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/wildlife/resources/butterflies/species/cabbage.htm.
> 
> Sources:
> May Berenbaum
> Department of Entomology
> University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
> 505 South Goodwin Avenue
> Urbana, IL 61801
> 
> Thomas Eisner
> Neurobiology and Behavior
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY 14853
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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