We learned in an earlier part of the course that water loss by transpiration across the integument of insects is restricted by cuticular hydrocarbons. Restriction of water loss is probably the principle, but certainly not the sole, biological role of hydrocarbons.
Hydrocarbons also serve as semiochemicals.
Semio is root of the word signal, and semiochemicals serve as chemical signals. Some of the signals that insects send and receive include sex attractants, aphrodisiacs, anti-aphrodisiacs, kairomones, aggregation pheromones, and recognition cues for species, caste, and kin. Leaders in pheromone research speculate that many other semiochemical roles of hydrocarbons remain to be discovered. Just to make the point, let us consider a few examples of cuticular lipids which function as semiochemicals in insects. We would not want to exhaustively list the hundreds of chemical now known to serve some function in chemical communication.