Posted on: Friday, February 18, 2005
Fake roach scent may cause fatal attraction
By Karen Kaplan
Los Angeles Times
In the long quest to build a better roach trap, researchers have identified the come-hither chemical of the female German cockroach and produced a synthetic version that makes males come running in fewer than nine seconds.
Department of Entomology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln The new synthetic version appears to work at least as well as the original, giving scientists hope that they might be able to shift the balance of power in the age-old contest between humans and cockroaches.
"Chemists have been trying to get this pheromone for decades," said Wendell Roelofs, a professor of insect biochemistry at Cornell University and one of the study's authors.
The compound that lures males to their potential mates is so powerful that cockroaches near death from starvation will forgo peanut butter for a chance to copulate, said Coby Schal, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University who co-authored the study, published today in the journal Science.
"Invariably, the male will choose the sex pheromone over the food, even though he may die on the way," Schal said.
German cockroaches — half-inch-long light brown bugs with dark brown stripes — are the most prevalent roach species in the world. Widely reviled for their general ickiness, they are responsible for spreading food poisoning, dysentery, cholera and other disease, and for triggering asthma in children.
Other cockroach species are easier to handle. The American cockroach, also known as the "Palmetto Bug," lives outdoors, and the Oriental cockroach, or "water bug," prefers sewers and other damp locales.
U.S. consumers spend more than $1 billion each year to rid their homes of roaches and other pests, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
With a single female roach capable of producing as many as 2 million offspring in a single year, pest control experts have lifetime employment. The best they can do to control the pests is to use food as bait to lure them into traps or to catch them on a glue board.
The pheromone approach promises to be far more effective, said Greg Baumann, technical director for the National Pest Management Association, a trade group based in Virginia.
The search for the sex pheromone has been a top priority for cockroach scientists, but it has been an arduous process because the compound is emitted in very small quantities and is so fragile that it easily degrades during laboratory analysis.
This female German cockroach belongs to the most prevalent cockroach species in the world.
