ABSTRACT
In recent years considerable progress has been made in the study of Dipteran pheromones, not only in determining the roles they play in intraspecific communication, but also in the identification of the compounds involved. Even so, the information available about pheromone systems in this group is much less extensive than that relating to pheromone communication in Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera, the other major groups of endopterygote insects. In part, this is because in Diptera the roles pheromones play in regulating behavior differ considerably from group to group as a result of the different life history strategies evolved by specific groups or even individual species. Also pheromone cues are frequently combined with other types of signaling, including auditory and visual stimuli, making precise analysis of the contribution of the pheromone to the overall behavioral response difficult. The situation is further complicated because in the majority of species investigated the pheromones are mixtures of several components.
