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Pheromones

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how animals influence the behaviour of others of their species by secreting or excreting chemical substances.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how members of the same species send each other invisible chemical signals to influence the way they behave. Pheromones are used by species across the animal kingdom in a variety of ways, such as laying trails to be followed, to raise the alarm, to scatter from predators, to signal dominance and to enhance attractiveness and, in honey bees, even direct development into queen or worker.

The image above is of male and female ladybirds that have clustered together in response to pheromones.

With

Tristram Wyatt
Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford

Jane Hurst
William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool

and

Francis Ratnieks
Professor of Apiculture and Head of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

49 minutes

Last on

Thu 21 Feb 2019 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

READING LIST:

Jack W. Bradbury and Sandra L. Vehrencamp, Principles of Animal Communication (2nd edition, Sinauer, 2011)

Thomas Eisner, For Love of Insects (Harvard University Press, 2005)

Tristram D. Wyatt, Pheromones and Animal Behavior: Chemical Signals and Signatures (2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Tristram D. Wyatt, Animal Behaviour: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017)

Broadcasts

  • Thu 21 Feb 2019 09:00
  • Thu 21 Feb 2019 21:30

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