Associative Learning of Nasonia vitripennis Walker (Hymenoptera:Pteromalidae) to Methyldisulfanylmethane

Traditional methods of volatile detection used by police typically consist of reliance on canine olfaction. However, dogs have some limitations such as cost of training and time of conditioning. The possibility of using parasitic wasps for detecting explosives and narcotics has been developed. Moreover, wasps are cheap to produce and can be conditioned with impressive speed for a specific chemical detection task. We examined the ability of Nasonia vitripennis Walker to learn and respond to methyldisulfanylmethane (DMDS), a volatile discriminator of cadaver. The training aimed to form an association between an unconditioned stimulus (pupae) and the conditioned stimulus (odor source). After the training, the time spent by conditioned wasps in the DMDS chamber was measured. Statistical analysis showed that the increasing concentrations involved an increase in the time spent in the chamber containing DMDS. This study indicates that N. vitripennis can respond to DMDS, which provide further support for its development as a biological sensor.