Antennal Sensilla in the Small Banana Weevil Polytus mellerborgi Boheman

[...]there has been no published work on the antennal structure of P. mellerborgi.[...]the aim of this study is to identify the different sensilla types of P. mellerborgi using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).In Carabidae, one of the neurons is sensitive to water soluble salts (Merivee et al., 2004), the second neuron responds to pH (Merivee et al., 2005; Milius et al., 2006), the third neuron responds to plant sugars and amino acids (Merivee et al., 2007, 2008, 2012), the fourth neuron is sensitive to plant secondary compounds like alkaloids and glucosides (Milius et al., 2011).[...]the presence of these sensilla types on the antennae probably suggests the importance of chemoreception in the behavioral ecology of P. mellerborgi.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was financially supported by National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2007BAD48B05-01) and National Nonprofit Institute Research Grant of CATAS-EPPRI (2008hzs1J008).