Dataset for Identification of giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, queen sex pheromone components

The Vespidae are a diverse family of wasps and hornets that contain invasive species and are formidable predators of insects, including social bees. Recently, the world’s largest hornet, <em>Vespa mandarinia</em> Smith(Hymenoptera: Vespidae), which occurs naturally in the Indomalayan region, has been found in Canada and United States. Some simulations indicate it could rapidly spread throughout Washington, Oregon, and parts of the eastern USA, threaten native bees and honey bees, and harm bee-pollinated crop production worth nearly $12 million annually. There is consequently an urgent need to learn more about <em>V. mandarinia</em>’s reproductive biology and to develop trapping methods to locate its nests and control its reproduction. We identified <em>V. mandarinia</em> queen-produced sex pheromone from the 5^th and 6^th intersegmental sternal glands of virgin queens. The major active compounds were hexanoic acid (HA), octanoic acid (OA) and decanoic acid (DA). When placed in field traps, the synthetic compounds and a queen-equivalent mixture rapidly attracted hundreds of males. This dataset provides the data used in this paper.胡蜂科（Vespidae）是一类物种多样性丰富的胡蜂与大黄蜂类群，其中包含入侵物种，同时亦是包括社会性蜜蜂在内的昆虫的强悍捕食者。近日，天然分布于印度马来亚区的世界体型最大的大黄蜂——大虎头蜂（<em>Vespa mandarinia</em> Smith，膜翅目（Hymenoptera）：胡蜂科（Vespidae）），已在加拿大与美国境内被发现。部分模拟研究表明，该物种或可快速扩散至华盛顿州、俄勒冈州及美国东部部分区域，对本土野生蜜蜂与家养蜜蜂（honey bees）构成威胁，并危及每年价值近1200万美元的蜜蜂授粉作物生产。因此，学界亟需深入探究大虎头蜂的生殖生物学特性，并开发诱捕方法以定位其巢穴、管控其种群繁殖。本研究从处女蜂王的第5、6节间腹板腺中分离鉴定出大虎头蜂蜂王分泌的性信息素，其主要活性成分为己酸（hexanoic acid, HA）、辛酸（octanoic acid, OA）及癸酸（decanoic acid, DA）。野外诱捕试验显示，合成的单一活性成分及蜂王当量混合成分均可快速吸引数百只雄蜂。本数据集即为本论文所使用的实验数据。