Alexander Haverkamp

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research

Octopamine is an important neuromodulator in the insect nervous system, influencing memory formation, sensory perception and motor control. In this study, we compare the distribution of octopamine-like immunoreactive neurons in two parasitic wasp species of the Nasonia genus, N. vitripennis and N. giraulti. These two species were previously describ...

Cost efficient foraging is of especial importance for animals like hawkmoths or hummingbirds that are feeding 'on the wing', making their foraging energetically demanding. The economic decisions made by these animals have a strong influence on the plants they pollinate and floral volatiles are often guiding these decisions. Here we show that the ha...

Pollination by insects is essential to many ecosystems. Previously, we have shown that floral scent is important to mediate pollen transfer between plants (Kessler et al., 2015). Yet, the mechanisms by which pollinators evaluate volatiles of single flowers remained unclear. Here, Nicotiana attenuata plants, in which floral volatiles have been genet...

Insects, including those which provide vital ecosystems services as well as those which are devastating pests or disease vectors, locate their resources mainly based on olfaction. Understanding insect olfaction not only from a neurobiological but also from an ecological perspective is therefore crucial to balance insect control and conservation. Ho...

The hawkmoth Manduca sexta and one of its preferred hosts in the North American Southwest, Datura wrightii , share a model insect–plant relationship based on mutualistic and antagonistic life-history traits. D. wrightii is the innately preferred nectar source and oviposition host for M. sexta . Hence, the hawkmoth is an important pollinator while t...

Insect herbivores such as caterpillars, are under strong selection pressure from natural enemies, especially parasitoid wasps. Although the role of olfaction in host-plant seeking has been investigated in great detail in parasitoids and adult lepidopteran, the caterpillar olfactory system and its significance in tri-trophic interactions remains poo...

Insect herbivores such as caterpillars, are under strong selection pressure from natural enemies, especially parasitoid wasps. Although the role of olfaction in host-plant seeking has been investigated in great detail in parasitoids and adult lepidopteran, the caterpillar olfactory system and its significance in tri-trophic interactions remains poo...

Insect herbivores such as caterpillars, are under strong selection pressure from natural enemies, especially parasitoid wasps. Although the role of olfaction in host-plant seeking has been investigated in great detail in parasitoids and adult lepidopteran, the caterpillar olfactory system and its significance in tri-trophic interactions remains poo...

Butterflies, like many insects, use gustatory and olfactory cues innately to assess the suitability of an oviposition site and are able to associate colours and leaf shapes with an oviposition reward. Studies on other insects have demonstrated that the quality of the reward is a crucial factor in forming associative memory. We set out to investigat...

The olfactory system of adult lepidopterans is among the best described neuronal circuits. However, comparatively little is known about the organization of the olfactory system in the larval stage of these insects. Here, we explore the expression of olfactory receptors and the organization of olfactory sensory neurons in caterpillars of Pieris bras...

Future food farming technology faces challenges that must integrate the core goal of keeping the global temperature increase within 1.5 °C without reducing food security and nutrition. Here, we show that boosting the production of insects and earthworms based on food waste and livestock manure to provide food and feed in China will greatly contribu...

Sensory processes have often been argued to play a central role in the selection of ecological niches and in the formation of new species. Butterflies are among the best studied animal groups with regards to their evolutionary and behavioral ecology and thereby offer an attractive system to investigate the role of chemosensory genes in sympatric sp...

In this poster that was presented at the ICOPA 2022 conference in Copenhagen, I showed some findings we have made during my PhD project. When and where different mutants of AcMNPV infects Spodoptera exigua central nervous systems (CNSs) and the immunoreactivity of the major neurotransmitters in uninfected S. exigua CNSs. Our conclusions and postula...

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for the development of fast and reliable testing methods for novel, zoonotic, viral diseases in both humans and animals. Pathologies lead to detectable changes in the volatile organic compound (VOC) profile of animals, which can be monitored, thus allowing the development of a rapid VOC-based test. In...

p>Pheromones are pivotal to sexual communication in insects. These chemical signals are processed by sexually dimorphic circuitries in the antennal lobe (AL) of the insect brain. However, there is limited understanding of how these circuitries form during AL development. Our review addresses this issue by comparing how circuitries develop throughou...

The COVID19 pandemic has illustrated the need for the development of fast and reliable testing methods for novel, zoonotic, viral diseases in both humans and animals. Pathologies lead to detectable changes in the Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) profile of animals, which can be monitored, thus allowing the development of a rapid VOC-based test. In t...

Most flowering plants depend on animal pollination for successful sexual reproduction. Floral signals such as color, shape, and odor are crucial in establishing this (often mutualistic) interaction. Plant and pollinator phenotypes can vary temporally but also spatially, thus creating mosaic-like patterns of local adaptations. Here, we investigated...

Insect pollination is essential to many unmanaged and agricultural systems and as such is a key element in food production. However, floral scents that pollinating insects rely on to locate host plants may be altered by atmospheric oxidants, such as ozone, potentially making these cues less attractive or unrecognizable to foraging insects and decre...

Parasitic wasps and their larval hosts are intimately connected by an array of behavioral adaptations and counter-adaptations. This co-evolution has led to highly specific, natural variation in learning rates and memory consolidation in parasitoid wasps. Similarly, the hosts of the parasitoids show specific sensory adaptations as well as non-associ...

Benzyl acetone (4‐phenylbutan‐2‐one; BA), the dominant floral fragrance of the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata, is known to attract night‐time pollinators, such as Manduca sexta hawkmoths. For this pollinator, BA is not only essential for the pollen transport between conspecific plants, but also for the moth’s short‐distance handling of flowers at...

Plant volatile detection through olfaction plays a crucial role in insect behaviors. In vivo , the odorant receptor co-receptor orco is an obligatory component for the function of odorant receptors (ORs), a major receptor family involved in insect olfaction. We used CRISPR-Cas9 targeted mutagenesis to knock-out (KO) orco in a neurophysiological mod...

Flower signaling and orientation are key characteristics that determine a flower's pollinator guild. However, many flowers actively move during their daily cycle, changing both their detectability and accessibility to pollinators. The flowers of the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata orientate their corolla upward at sunset and downward after sunrise...

Most pollinators visit flowers in the search of nectar rewards. However, as the floral nectar can often not be directly detected by pollinators, many flower visitors use secondary metabolites such as odor- or taste-proxies to anticipate nectar quantity and quality. Plants might exploit these sensory inferences of the pollinator to increase their po...

More than 87% of flowering plant species are animal-pollinated [1] and produce floral scents and other signals to attract pollinators. These floral cues may however also attract antagonistic visitors, including herbivores [2]. The dilemma is exacerbated when adult insects pollinate the same plant that their larvae consume. It remains largely unclea...

Adult Drosophila melanogaster locate food resources by using distinct olfactory cues that often are associated with the fermentation of fruit. However, in addition to being an odorous food source and providing a possible site for oviposition, fermenting fruit also provides a physical substrate upon which flies can attract and court a potential mate...

Supplementary Figures 1-4 and Supplementary Reference

3-d track of a moth flying in the wind tunnel. Odour source (Head space of a flower of Nicotiana alata) located left in the tunnel.

Accumulative CO2 concentration in a test chamber, while a moth is foraging at a flower of Nicotiana alata.

Finding a partner is an essential task for members of all species. Like many insects, females of the noctuid moth Heliothis virescens release chemical cues consisting of a species-specific pheromone blend to attract conspecific males. While tracking these blends, male moths are also continuously confronted with a wide range of other odor molecules,...

Host plant choice is of vital importance for egg laying herbivorous insects that do not exhibit brood care. Several aspects, including palatability, nutritional quality and predation risk, have been found to modulate host preference. Olfactory cues are thought to enable host location. However, experimental data on odor features that allow choosing...