Cuticular hydrocarbon divergence in the jewel wasp Nasonia: evolutionary shifts in chemical communication channels?

The evolution and maintenance of intraspecific communication channels constitutes a key feature of chemical signaling and sexual communication. However, how divergent chemical communication channels evolve while maintaining their integrity for both sender and receiver is poorly understood. In the present study, we compare male and female cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles in the jewel wasp genus Nasonia, analyze their chemical divergence, and investigate their role as species-specific sexual signaling cues. Males and females of all four Nasonia species showed unique, non-overlapping CHC profiles unambiguously separating them. Surprisingly, male and female phylogenies based on the chemical distances between their CHC profiles differed dramatically, where only male CHC divergence parallels the molecular phylogeny of Nasonia. In particular, N. giraulti female CHC profiles were the most divergent from all other species and very different from its most closely related sibling species N. on...