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Temporal coding of pheromone pulses and trains in Manduca sexta

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Summary

We investigated the ability of pheromone-sensitive olfactory receptors of male Manduca sexta to respond to 20-ms pulses of bombykal, the major component of the conspecific pheromonal blend. Isolated pulses of bombykal elicited a burst of activity which decreased exponentially with a time constant of 160–250 ms. Trains of pulses delivered at increasing frequencies (0.5–10 Hz) elicited temporally modulated responses at up to 3 Hz. Concentration of the stimulus (1, 10, 100 ng per odor source) had a marginal effect on the temporal resolution of the receptors. Within a train, the responses to individual pulses remained constant, except for 10-Hz trains (short-term adaptation). A dose-dependent decline of responsiveness was observed during experiments (long-term adaptation). Although individual neurons may not respond faithfully to each pulse of a train, the population of receptors sampled in this study appears to be capable of encoding the onset of odor pulses at frequencies of up to at least 3 Hz.

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Abbreviations

BAL :

bombykal or (E,Z)-10,12-hexadecadienal

C15 :

(E,Z)-11,13-pentadecadienal

HAL :

(E)-2-hexenal

EAG :

electroantennogram

P1, P2, P3 :

single stimulus pulses

PSTH :

peri-stimulus histogram

SC :

synchronization coefficient

0.5, 1, 2, 3, 10 Hz :

stimulus trains

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRA, Station de Phytopharmacie, route de Saint Cyr, 78026, Versailles cedex, France

    F. Marion-Poll

  2. University of Arizona, ARLDN, 611 Gould Simpson Building, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA

    T. R. Tobin

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  1. F. Marion-Poll
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  2. T. R. Tobin
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Marion-Poll, F., Tobin, T.R. Temporal coding of pheromone pulses and trains in Manduca sexta . J Comp Physiol A 171, 505–512 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00194583

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