Trapping Female Medflies (Ceratitis capitata) by Broadcast of Male Calling Song
Abstract
Attractants for female medflies are of particular interest in monitoring programs where sterile males are released to eradicate incipient populations. A female-targeted trap also could assist the monitoring of mass-trapping suppression efforts in areas of established populations. Mating in this species occurs primarily in leks where groups of males aggregate on the undersides of leaves near the tops of host trees. Each male occupies the underside of a leaf and emits a sex pheromone while vibrating his wings to produce a "calling song", at ca. 350 Hz. When a female lands on top of a leaf and climbs below, the male begins a series of visual displays, and if the female remains interested, he attempts copulation. To consider the feasibility of developing a female-targeted acoustic trap for medflies, we first observed that females landed and remained significantly longer at sites near speakers broadcasting a high-intensity calling song than at sites without song. These results led us to conduct several additional bioassays to determine whether broadcast calling song increased the percentages of females captured in adhesive traps.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADP022884
Entities
People
- J. B. Anderson
- R. W. Mankin
Organizations
- United States Department of Agriculture