<p>When the study of this thesis was initiated, hardly any work had been carried out on how plant odour information was encoded by the olfactory RNs in heliothine moths. The method of gas chromatography linked to single cell recordings (GC-SCR) was employed and improved for identifying naturally occurring plant odorants that are detected by single RNs and can be considered as biologically relevant. Three species of the subfamily Heliothinae were included in this work, the two polyphagous <i>H. virescens </i>and <i>H. armigera</i> and the oligophagous <i>H. assulta</i>. The American <i>H. virescens</i> is geographically separated from the other two species. <i>H. armigera</i> and <i>H. assulta</i> are partly sympatric in Asia and Australia.</p><p>The aims of the thesis elucidated in Papers I-IV were as follows:</p><p>1. To identify plant produced volatiles detected by antennal RNs in the three species of the subfamily Heliothinae.</p><p>2. To elucidate whether the single RNs can be classified into distinct types according to their specificity.</p><p>3. To characterise the plant odour RN types by their molecular receptive ranges, sensitivity and specificity.</p><p>4. To compare the specificity of plant odour RN types across the three related species of Heliothinae, with the aim to reveal any differences in the peripheral olfactory system that may have evolved through evolution.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:ntnu-570 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Røstelien, Tonette |
| Publisher | Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Biology, Fakultet for naturvitenskap og teknologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary, text |
| Relation | Doktoravhandlinger ved NTNU, 1503-8181 ; 2005:73 |
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