Y-tube Olfactometer for Entomology

The insectPRO insect olfactometer is used to study entomological interactions between insects and plants or insects vs natural or artificial cues, or insects vs natural environs like temperature, humidity etc. Olfaction studies involve an air compressor which can generate air pressure. The pressured air is transported through the chemical resistant pipes into a humidity chamber to introduce humidity into the dry air. The humidified air is then passed through the air valves which regulates the amount of air passing through each of the outputs. The output is then connected into test and control chambers and the output from here is then passed into the Y-tubing selection chamber for study insects behavior vs control or cue 1 vs cue 2. 

           There are two Y tube models are supplied with each of the olfactometer 1) for studying small sized insects and 2) another is slightly bigger than the first one which is used to release small as well as bigger size insects i.e, any type crawling or flying that is 25mm in size can be used using this tubings. The smaller one is more appropriate to release whiteflies and similar sized insects as using a bigger size olfactometer is disproportionate to the size of the insects and also using an outsized Y tube may require higher sample size.

         Depending on the size of the olfactometer you can choose to regulate the amount of test or control air that is needed to pass through the tubing.  The amount of air required depends on various factors like responsive eliciting nature of the chemical, responsive behavior of insects, sized insects etc. and it may be suitable to check from low to 40-400ml per minute to medium level to 5 l/p/min higher levels up to 10 l/p/min depending on the experimental results.

The addition of humidity to the air will improve repeatability of the experiment results as this will ensure that the insect samples used in the study are in good shape and were treated appropriately so that probable bias arises out of use of an unfit environment or air can be eliminated. We usually provide cool humidified air through the system hoping laboratory temperature is at the recommended room temperature i.e. 25 + or - 2 degrees. We can also supply a unit to release temperature regulated humidified air at an extra cost. Please add in the comments section when you are specifically looking for this option.

Two separate chambers of the same size are provided to keep samples of interest. Each of the sample size collection chamber is of one liter volume the glass unit is completely made of glass which has a provision for both inlet and outlet of the air. We can customize and supply a large sized glass casing for using planted pots for an experiment. These units are supplied as customized and for that, please mention the size of the plant pot that is planned to be used in the study.

An installation slanting stand can also be supplied with an extra cost. A 45 degrees stand will help to keep the Y-tubing in a slanting position so that the released insects will find a way to fly upwards instantly. This will ensure flying insects fly actively upward so that selection of the test materials can be quicker and unbiased as most of the flying insects are considered as active and no bias is being introduced due to unfit insects.