The Rules of Attraction

Now this is just not playing fair. Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (who are conducting endlessly interesting research, I'm belatedly discovering) were trying to figure out how to get male pink hibiscus mealybugs to congregate together so the pests could be more easily detected. At some, point the light bulb went off in somebody's head, and they hit on the obvious answer: Develop a bait using the two compounds that make up the female mealybug's sex pheromone. Now the scientists are using the formula as (in ARS's own words) a "sex lure." Oh, that's just dirty pool.