ABSTRACT
Flight is the most common form of locomotion used by insects to locate distant sources of sex pheromone. Although sex pheromone-mediated flight occurs in the vast majority of insect orders, by far the group most intensity observed and recorded for the purpose of understanding flight behavior is the Lepidoptera. This chapter focuses on studies of the flight behavior of male moths. The behavioral analysis of lepidopteran pheromone-mediated flight has always been performed with the goal of moving beyond merely counting the number of moths trapped at a source of pheromone and understanding what male moths do, how they maneuver in response to their pheromone. The chapter attempts to cover what has been learned about pheromone-mediated flight in moths from all levels of studies, but emphasizing what we know about the in-flight maneuvers that affect the moths’ immediate complex problem of maintaining contact with the pheromone plume and advancing up it while tracking the wind direction.
