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Environment

Gut Bacteria Help Roaches Get Together

Chemical Communication: The German cockroach’s microbiome helps determine the composition of the insect’s congregating pheromones

by Judith Lavelle
December 21, 2015 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 93, Issue 49

ATTRACTIVE BUG
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Credit: Shutterstock
Symbiotic microbes in the gut of the German cockroach produce volatile compounds, including the carboxylic acids shown, that work as pheromones to attract fellow roaches.
A picture of a German cockroach along with the structures of six carboxylic acid pheromones.
Credit: Shutterstock
Symbiotic microbes in the gut of the German cockroach produce volatile compounds, including the carboxylic acids shown, that work as pheromones to attract fellow roaches.

When cockroaches want to huddle up, the insects sniff out aggregation pheromones in each other’s poop. A study now shows that the production of these volatile compounds depends on the specific microbes in a roach’s gut (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2015, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1504031112). A team led by Coby Schal of North Carolina State University analyzed German cockroach waste and found 40 volatile carboxylic acids acting as aggregation pheromones. But feces from axenic cockroaches—those raised under sterile conditions with no microorganisms in their gut—lacked many of these pheromones. In side-by-side tests, cockroach nymphs were more attracted to the feces of control roaches than that of axenic roaches. But after the team inoculated axenic roaches with six bacteria species cultured from control roaches, feces from the microbially colonized roaches also attracted nymphs. The team further created a synthetic blend of six pheromones based on compounds found in the control group’s feces. That mix was better at attracting nymphs raised in the same environment as the control cockroaches than a commercial pheromone blend that came from unrelated roaches.

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