Solid-phase microextraction of insect epicuticular hydrocarbons for gas chromatographic mass spectrometric analysis

A recently developed solvent-free sampling method, solid-phase microextraction, has been employed for sampling the cuticular hydrocarbons from three species of social wasps for GM/MS analysis. Comparison between the gas chromatograms of cuticular hydrocarbons obtained by microextraction and those of hexane-extracted samples from the same specimens shows that solid-phase microextraction is very suitable for sampling insect cuticle hydrocarbons, including those of high molecular weight. Because of its simplicity, this method is very suitable for routine work.