Abstract
Pyrethroid insecticides have long been known to act on insect nerve (Wigglesworth, 1941; Lowenstein, 1942) and the mode of action of allethrin, the first synthetic pyrethroid, has been studied extensively using a variety of invertebrate nerve preparations (Narahashi, 1971a). One of the distinctive features of pyrethroids is their greater toxicity to insects as temperature is lowered but, since poisoning symptoms can be reversed by changing temperature, this cannot be explained solely by differences in metabolism or cuticular penetration (see Blum and Kearns, 1956). Therefore neurophysiological techniques have been employed over a range of temperatures to gain an understanding of this phenomenon since clearly, any effect of allethrin which becomes enhanced as temperature decreases, could explain the greater toxicity of pyrethroids at low temperatures.
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© 1979 Plenum Press, New York
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Gammon, D.W. (1979). An Analysis of the Temperature-Dependence of the Toxicity of Allethrin to the Cockroach. In: Narahashi, T. (eds) Neurotoxicology of Insecticides and Pheromones. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0970-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0970-3_6
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