Host response profiles: a new theory to help us understand why and how attractants attract.

Much insect behavior is better described in terms of response profiles than by classical stimulus-response patterns; the response to a particular stimulus may vary with changing internal and external conditions, making it important to qualify statements such as "compound X is an attractant." Because of the large number of conditions that may affect responses, it is crucial to develop a theoretical basis to direct the collection of field and experimental data, and their interpretation. A theory-driven model can help us predict response profiles over a wide range of such conditions. We describe an example of such a model, the assumptions upon which it is based, how the model is constructed, and the types of results that a computer implementation of the model can produce.