The odor of mimicry

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Schulz
• Subject Area: Biological and Biomimetic Chemistry ; Analytical Chemistry ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407040600

Heliconius butterflies are model organisms for the study of speciation, evolution, and mimicry because of their complex mimicry relationships. While optical mimicry is well studied, its influence on chemical communication through semiochemicals is less studied. The first phase of the project focused on the extremely high chemical diversity in scent organs, some of which could contain up to 350 compounds in a butterfly and up to 1,000 compounds in an entire mimicry group. In the requested extension project, the focus is on some chemically complex key components whose key role emerged in the first project phase. These are some macrocyclic lactones, a so far poorly characterized further compound of unknown structure, and some polyunsaturated esters. Furthermore, new aspects emerged in the first project, which will now also be investigated. In some Eueides species, which also belong to the heliconiines, surface lipids were discovered that represent a novel class of compounds and are clearly different from all previously known surface lipids from insects. Proposed structures have been or are being developed for all of these compounds. To verify the correctness of the proposed structures, these compounds will be prepared by organic syntheses. The resulting material will be used for structure verification, to determine the chirality of the compounds and to test their biological activity. These tests and other work will be carried out with the Jiggins (Cambridge), Dasmahapatra (York), and Merrill (Munich) groups, who may also perform genome analyses to identify possible biosynthetic pathways to the compounds and to address evolutionary biology questions. The previous phase of the project focused on chemical signals emanating from males. This will now be complemented by the analysis of the scent substances of females. Some evidence suggests that the scent of females is important for mating success. For this purpose, scent analyses of the females have to be performed and investigations by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and other methods have to be carried out. Subsequently, the substances will be synthesized and made available for biotests with the cooperating groups.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants