Hair-pencils and
Coremata are
pheromone signaling structures present in
lepidopteran males. Males use hair-pencils in
courtship behaviors with females, the pheromones excreted by the hair-pencils serve as both
aphrodisiacs and
tranquilizers to females as well as repellents to
conspecific males. Hair-pencil
glands are stored inside the male until courtship begins, at which point they are forced out of the body by levers present on the abdomen. Coremata (the singular form being corema) are very similar structures. Their exact definition is confused by early descriptions but they are more specifically defined as the internal, glandular, eversible structures that bear the hair-pencils and can be voluntarily inflated with
hemolymph or air.