Larvae of Sasakia charonda (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Apaturinae) and three related species use oral odorants to repel ants and wasps
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We incidentally discovered that the larvae of Sasakia charonda (Hewitson, 1863) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Apaturinae) disturbed by ants, wasps, or humans release volatile compounds orally. To identify these substances, we collected oral odorant samples directly from the mouths of S. charonda larvae into volatile-collecting tubes. The trapped oral odorant samples were subjected to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). We confirmed the identity of 19 substances by comparing them to GC results of known standards and inferred them to mainly be alcohols and aldehydes/ketones, with main chains of 4–5 carbons. Three of the chemicals in the oral odorant samples, 2-butanol, 1-penten-3-ol, and 3-pentanone, showed a repellant effect on the ants Pristomyrmex punctatus (Smith, 1860) and Formica japonica Motschoulsky, 1866 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). We also examined the effects of these 19 volatiles on Polistes spp. (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) and confirmed that some of them were effective repellants against these wasps. We propose that the substances we identified in this study can be used as defensive chemicals, analogous to the osmeterium emissions specific to Papilionidae butterflies. Furthermore, we examined the oral odorants of three related Japanese Apaturine species, Hestina assimilis (Linnaeus, 1758), H. persimilis (Westwood, 1850), and Apatura metis (Freyer, 1829) using the same approach. The chemical compositions of the oral odorants of H. assimilis and H. persimilis were similar to that of S. charonda , whereas that of A. metis differed. Some of the oral substances also induced a defensive response in conspecific Apaturinae larvae. We consider these substances to also act as alarm pheromones in these larvae.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".