Pest management based on insect olfaction
Insects are using olfaction to find food, mating partners as well as places for mating and egg laying. They have a very sensitive sense of smell to locate exactly these resources they need. This specialised sense of smell facilitates that insects can be fooled by us.
Contacts
With their antennae are insects “filtering” the air for chemical information (odour molecules). They can follow an odour track up to the source. This odour can we copy and use it to avoid crop damage by pest insects. Knowledge on this eclectic chemical perception is called chemical ecology and can be used to develop novel pest management tools.
