Sexy Strategy

Sexy Strategy Fooling the crafty cockroach

For some 300 million years, the cockroach has survived the ravages of nature and, lately, the best efforts of man to squash it, spray it or bug-bomb it into extinction. Some 3,600 species of the hardy creature thrive in a variety of habitats all over the world. Now one of the most common species in the U.S., Periplaneta americana, or the American cockroach,* may be hit by a blow below the belt: scientists have synthesized periplanone B, a chemical that acts as one of the female roaches' essences d'amour.

A whiff of periplanone B from a female acts as an aphrodisiac for male American roaches, prompting them to mate. If the males are overwhelmed by a massive man-made dose, however, they may become too confused to find mates, and thus will fail to procreate.

This sex strategy has been touted as a promising approach in pest control. But the search for the complex roach excitant was a needle-in-the-haystack challenge. For Dutch Entomologist CJ. Persoons, the breakthrough came with new techniques for separating chemicals.

Working with 75,000 virgin female roaches, Persoons gleaned a precious 200 millionths of a gram of periplanone B. That was enough for him to analyze the compound and to work out a possible structure for it. Then Chemist W. Clark Still at Columbia University synthesized a compound so potent that a drop could stimulate close to one million tons of male roaches.

Unfortunately, no amount of synthetic periplanone B is apt to stimulate an entire roach species into extinction. As rueful scientists have found in using pesticides, a few hardy roaches can usually survive a chemical spray because of some lucky genetic abnormality and will then propagate a new generation of spray-resistant offspring. Declares Entomologist Louis Roth, a pioneer in roach research: "The best we can hope for is to reduce their numbers."

Believe it or not, a reduction in roach ranks may be a better solution than extinction. Different roach species figure in the food cycles of lizards and birds. Moreover, loathsome as it may seem, entomologists speculate that roaches may some day be a source of nutrition for humans.

*Despite the name, the German cockroach, Blatella germanica, is probably mostfamiliar to U.S. city dwellers as a kitchen nemesis. The American roach is often found where food is stored.

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