Modeling Pheromone Production Overview

Sexually communication among moths is accomplished chemically by the release of an “odor”: sexual pheromones. Pheromones are molecules that can be carried by a diffusion process in which the random movement of gas molecules transport the chemical away from its source. Pheromone chemicals obey to the diffusion equation, resulting in a straightforward application of the mathematics of a diffusing source. (referencia Lecture 9)

The equation of diffusion that we will use in this project to model the pheromones dispersion will adopt the form of the heat equation, and will be solved by the Euler numeric approximation. See more about heat equation and mathematical expressions for Euler method.

Moths seem to respond to gradients of pheromone concentration attracted towards the source, although there are other factors that lead moths sexually to pheromone sources such as optomotor anemotaxis (J. N. Perry and C. Wall , A Mathematical Model for the Flight of Pea Moth to Pheromone Traps Through a Crop). However, increasing the pheromone concentration to unnaturally high levels may disrupt male orientation (W. L. Roelofs and R. T. Carde, Responses of Lepidoptera to synthetic sex pheromone chemicals and their analogues). See more about model for moth flight.

The pheromone diffusion process and moth behavior when they are in presence of our synthetic plants acting as continuously-emitting sources, are modeled in Netlogo.