Insecticide

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Structural formula of cantharidin

Insecticides are poisons that are produced by insects . Poisons serve the insects to protect against microorganisms , parasites and predators or to overwhelm prey .

The term insecticides also often includes other articulated animals , especially scorpion toxins .

ingredients

Insecticides that are actively released are mixtures. The main active ingredients of these poison mixtures are peptides and proteins . They also contain alkaloids , terpenes , polysaccharides , biogenic amines (such as histamines ), organic acids (such as formic acid ) and amino acids . Many hymenoptera toxins contain a complex mixture of simple organic molecules, proteins, peptides and other bioactive elements.

Aposematistischer oil beetle Hycleus lugens
wasp
Construction of scale ants

Examples of insecticides are:

administration

Some insects can deliver poison directly into the tissue through a poison sting , others can squirt poison packages (like bombardier beetles ) or spray (like scale ants , great fork-tailed caterpillars ) or leak (like ladybugs) or contain poison in the body to be inedible (like some bedbugs , oil beetles). Some poisonous insects (such as wasps, ladybugs, alder bark owl ) have warning colors , which is called aposematism .

The US entomologist Justin O. Schmidt had also suspected that some species of the two-winged, reticulated and beetles can administer poisons with mouthparts, but it is unclear whether the underlying observations were the effects of digestive juices.

Effects

Biological effects

Due to the multitude of poisons, there is a multitude of mechanisms of action. The spectrum of activity is extensive, but for actively released insect venom it can be roughly divided into neurotoxic, hemolytic, digestive, hemorrhagic and algogenic (pain-causing) effects. Nerve poisons may dominate among the particularly potent poisons. Others act as chaperones and change the tertiary structure of proteins and thus their functions.

Toxicity to mammals

Hymenoptera poisons can be compared with one another according to their lethal dose (LD 50 ) in mice as follows:

LD 50 values ​​of poisons from hymenoptera in mice
family Art LD 50 (mg / kg)
Ant wasps (Mutillidae) Dasymutilla klugii 71
Wasps (Vespidae) Vespula squamosa 3.5
Real bees (Apidae) Apis mellifera 2.8
Wasps (Vespidae) Polistes canadensis 2.4
Ants (Formicidae) Pogonomyrmex spp. 0.66
Ants (Formicidae) Pogonomyrmex maricopa 0.12

Ponera toxin is an insect poison with a particularly high pain effect . According to Justin O. Schmidt's sting pain index ( Schmidt Sting Pain Index ), which describes the severity of pain on a scale from 1.0 to 4.x, poneratoxin is at 4.x.

Allergy

Structural formula of pumiliotoxin A

The same dose of poison sometimes has a different effect on different people. This can often be attributed to different degrees of allergenization . Especially after stings by honey bees ( Apis mellifera ), wasps (especially Vespula vulgaris , Vespula germanica ), more rarely also hornets ( Vespa crabro ) and bumblebees ( Bombus spp. ), Insect venom allergies can occur more frequently, the range of reactions can range from 'harmless' to anaphylactic Shock extend.

Centruroides suffusus

evolution

Insecticides were developed over 100 million years ago, initially for defense . That is how old a find in amber from the Cretaceous period of an early Cantharid was, who obviously defended himself against a predator by means of chemical weapons. Six pairs of vesicles remained as inclusions.

Use by other organisms

Vertebrate sequestration

Some amphibians can eat poisonous insects and store the insecticides in and under their skin ( sequestration ). These include in particular the poison dart frogs. Since the origin of the toxins was often unknown, these toxins are usually called amphibian toxins .

There are also some poisonous birds such as two-colored pitohui , Pitohui ferrugineus , Mohrenpitohui and blue-capped flute, which get their toxins from eating insects and sequester them in their skin and plumage. The barnacles also eat oil beetles (Meloidae), which contain cantharidin. This enriches them in their tissues, so that consuming the spurge, depending on the amount of beetles ingested, is poisonous for predators and humans.

Use by humans

Some of the poisons originally synthesized by insects but accumulated by special predators have been used as potent arrow poisons for millennia. Some insecticides such as cantharidin were and are still used medicinally (e.g. cantharid plasters ). However, the underlying mechanisms of action of traditionally used agents are often poorly understood.

For the therapy of insect venom allergies, the triggering insect venom is usually administered in low doses.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ E. Zlotkin et al .: An excitatory and a depressant insect toxin from scorpion venom both affect sodium conductance and possess a common binding site. In: Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 240, No. 2, 1985, pp. 877-887.
  2. ↑ ME De Lima et al .: Tityus serrulatus toxin VII bears pharmacological properties of both β-toxin and insect toxin from scorpion venoms. In: Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 139, No. 1, 1986, pp. 296-302.
  3. ↑ H. Darbon et al .: Covalent structure of the insect toxin of the North African scorpion Androctonus australis Hector. In: International Journal of Peptide and Protein Research 20, No. 4, 1982, pp. 320-330, doi : 10.1111 / j.1399-3011.1982.tb00897.x .
  4. ↑ a b c d W. L. Meyer: Most toxic insect venom. (PDF) In: Book of Insect Records , Chapter 23, Gainesville Florida May 1, 1996. Retrieved July 6, 2015.
  5. ^ JO Schmidt: Chemistry, pharmacology and chemical ecology of ant venoms. In: T. Piek (Ed.): Venoms of the hymenoptera. Academic Press, London 1986, pp. 425-508.
  6. ↑ MS Blum: Chemical defenses in arthropods. 'Academic Press. New York 1981, p. 562.
  7. ↑ a b P. R. de Lima, MR Brochetto-Braga: Hymenoptera venom review focusing on Apis mellifera. In: J. Venom. Anim. Toxins incl. Trop. Dis Volume 9, No. 2 Botucatu 2003.
  8. ^ John Tidwell (2001): The intoxicating birds of New Guinea. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: ZooGoer. Vol. 30, No. 2., 2001.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / webzoom.freewebs.com
  9. ↑ Stephanie Greenman Stone, Pat Kilduff: New Research Shows that Toxic Birds and Poison-dart Frogs Likely Acquire their Toxins from Beetles. ( Memento of December 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Newsroom of the California Academy of Sciences, article dated October 12, 2004.
  10. ↑ John P. Dumbacher, Avit Wako, Scott R. Derrickson, Allan Samuelson, Thomas F. Spande, John W. Daly: Melyrid beetles (Choresine): A putative source for the batrachotoxin alkaloids found in poison-dart frogs and toxic passerine birds . (PDF) In: PNAS 101, No. 45, 2004, pp. 15857–15860, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0407197101 .
  11. ↑ Bethany Halford: Birds and beetles: A toxic trail. In: Chemical & Engineering News 82, No. 45, 2004, p. 17.
  12. ↑ Ariel Rodríguez, Dennis Poth, Stefan Schulz, Miguel Vences: Discovery of skin alkaloids in a miniaturized eleutherodactylid frog from Cuba. Biology Letters, Royal Society Publishing, online publication on November 3, 2010 doi : 10.1098 / rsbl.2010.0844
  13. ^ JO Schmidt: Biochemistry of insect venoms. In: Annu. Rev. Entomol. 27, 1982, pp. 339-368.
  14. ↑ Naofumi, et al .: Protein function: chaperonin turned insect toxin. In: Nature 411, No. 6833, 2001, pp. 44-44, doi : 10.1038 / 35075148 .
  15. ^ A b J. O. Schmidt, MS Blum, WL Overal: Comparative lethality of venoms from stinging Hymenoptera. In: Toxicon 18, 1980, pp. 469-474.
  16. ^ A b c J. O. Schmidt: Hymenopteran venoms: Striving towards the ultimate defense against vertebrates. In: DL Evans, JO Schmidt (Ed.): Insect defenses: adaptive mechanisms and strategies of prey and predators. SUNY Press, Albany, NY 1990, pp. 387-419.
  17. ^ PJ Schmidt, WC Sherbrooke, JO Schmidt: The detoxification of ant (Pogonomyrmex) venom by a blood factor in horned lizards (Phrynosoma). In: Copeia 1989, 1989, pp. 603-607.
  18. ↑ Justin O. Schmidt, MS Blum and WL Overal: Hemolytic activities of stinging insect venoms. Arch. Insect Biochem. Physiol., 1, 1984, pp. 155-160.
  19. ↑ David BK Golden, David G. Marsh, Anne Kagey-Sobotka, Linda Freidhoff, Moyses Szklo, Martin D. Valentine, Lawrence M. Lichtenstein: Epidemiology of insect venom sensitivity. In: JAMA 262, No. 2, 1989, pp. 240-244, doi : 10.1001 / jama.1989.03430020082033 .
  20. ^ A b G. O. Poinar Jr, CJ Marshall, R. Buckley: One hundred million years of chemical warfare by insects. In: Journal of Chemical Ecology 33, No. 9, 2007, pp. 1663-1669, doi : 10.1007 / s10886-007-9343-9 .
  21. ↑ Alan H. Savitzky, Akira Mori, Deborah A. Hutchinson, Ralph A. Saporito, Gordon M. Burghardt, Harvey B. Lillywhite, Jerrold Meinwald: Sequestered defensive toxins in tetrapod vertebrates: principles, patterns, and prospects for future studies. In: Chemoecology . Volume 22, No. 3, September 2012, pp. 141-158, doi : 10.1007 / s00049-012-0112-z
  22. ^ Stefan Bartram, Wilhelm Boland: Chemistry and ecology of toxic birds. In: ChemBioChem 2, No. 11, November 2001, pp. 809-811, doi : 10.1002 / 1439-7633 (20011105) 2:11 <809 :: AID-CBIC809> 3.0.CO; 2-C .
  23. ↑ Karem Ghoneim: Cantharidin toxicosis to animal and human in the world: A review.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.standresjournals.org   In: Standard Res. J. Toxicol. Environ. Health Sci 1, 2013, pp. 001-022.
  24. ↑ Konrad Dettner: Poisons and pharmaceuticals from insects - their origin, effect and ecological significance. (PDF) In: Entomol. today. 19, 2007, pp. 3-28.
  25. ↑ Martin D. Valentine, et al .: The value of immunotherapy with venom in children with allergy to insect stings. (PDF) In: New England Journal of Medicine 323, No. 23, 1990, pp. 1601-1603.
  26. ↑ Iris Bellinghausen, Gudrun Metz, Alexander H. Enk, Steffen Christmann, Jürgen Knop, Joachim Saloga: Insect venom immunotherapy induces interleukin ‐ 10 production and a Th2 ‐ to ‐ Th1 shift, and changes surface marker expression in venom ‐ allergic subjects. In: European Journal of Immunology 27, No. 5, 1997, pp. 1131-1139, doi : 10.1002 / eji.1830270513 .