Animals have evolved sophisticated chemical communication systems, including volatile sex pheromones that are used in mate recruitment, and cu-ticular constituents that elicit courtship and copulation upon contact (Carde and Minks 1997). In most insects sex pheromones are produced in and emitted from specialized pheromone glands, and in female moths these glands generally constitute an epidermal layer near the female's ovipositor (Percy-Cunningham and Mac-Donald 1987). These glands synthesize de novo all the components of the pheromone blend (Bjostad et al. 1987; Jurenka and Roelofs 1993), and although mechanisms of pheromone export to the exterior remain unknown, these lipophilic compounds presumably require little if any interaction with an aqueous environment. Here we report that in Holomelina tiger moths (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) pheromone is synthesized by tissues associated with the abdominal integument, and that lipophorin, a multifunctional plasma lipoprotein, transports the pheromone to an abdominal gland that stores and releases the pheromone only during active calling behavior. We suggest that such transport pathways are common not only among insects that emit hydrocarbon pheromones but also among insects that sequester hydrophobic plant-derived metabolites.
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