Abstract
The male silkmoth Bombyx mori responds behaviourally to bombykol concentrations in air of 3,000 molecules per ml presented at an air speed of 57 cm/s, i.e. the moth is almost as sensitive as a dog. The number of bombykol receptor neurons per antenna is 17,000, about 10,000-fold smaller than olfactory neurons found in dog noses. This high sensitivity is possible due to a very effective capture of odorant molecules and transport to the receptor neurons. The effectiveness of the insect antenna/nose has been determined by using radiolabeled bombykol, counting nerve impulses generated by the receptor neuron, and measuring the behavioural response of the male moth. At the behavioural threshold the neuronal signal/noise discrimination works at the theoretical limit.
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Kaissling, KE. (2009). The Sensitivity of the Insect Nose: The Example of Bombyx Mori . In: Gutiérrez, A., Marco, S. (eds) Biologically Inspired Signal Processing for Chemical Sensing. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 188. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00176-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00176-5_3
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