Meeting Abstract

73.2  Wednesday, Jan. 6  Friend or Foe; Behavioral Responses to Pheromones of Conspecifics in the northern scorpion, Paruroctonus boreus MILLER, A/L; University of Tampa abraham.miller@ut.edu

I investigated the behavioral response of male Paruroctonus boreus to male and female conspecifics. Adult male scorpions actively search for females during the mating season, while lacking visual cues to direct their movement. Chemical cues (pheromones) are thought to be responsible for directing movement. In a series of laboratory experiments, in Y-mazes, males were exposed to areas that had contained males and females from the same population and areas that had contained conspecifics from different populations. Males spent significantly more time in areas that had contained females from the same population but did not show a preference for areas exposed to females from different populations. Males also significantly avoided areas exposed to males from the same population. My results suggest that P. boreus exhibits a sex specific response to pheromones and that this response may be population specific.