scholarly journals Behavioral Responses of the Invasive Fly Philornis downsi to Stimuli from Bacteria and Yeast in the Laboratory and the Field in the Galapagos Islands

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 431
Author(s):  
Boaz Yuval ◽  
Paola Lahuatte ◽  
Polpass Arul Jose ◽  
Charlotte E. Causton ◽  
Edouard Jurkevitch ◽  
...  

Philornis downsi Dodge and Aitken (Diptera: Muscidae) is an avian parasitic fly that has invaded the Galapagos archipelago and exerts an onerous burden on populations of endemic land birds. As part of an ongoing effort to develop tools for the integrated management of this fly, our objective was to determine its long- and short-range responses to bacterial and fungal cues associated with adult P. downsi. We hypothesized that the bacterial and fungal communities would elicit attraction at distance through volatiles, and appetitive responses upon contact. Accordingly, we amplified bacteria from guts of adult field-caught flies and from bird feces, and yeasts from fermenting papaya juice (a known attractant of P. downsi), on selective growth media, and assayed the response of flies to these microbes or their exudates. In the field, we baited traps with bacteria or yeast and monitored adult fly attraction. In the laboratory, we used the proboscis extension response (PER) to determine the sensitivity of males and females to tarsal contact with bacteria or yeast. Long range trapping efforts yielded two female flies over 112 trap-nights (attracted by bacteria from bird feces and from the gut of adult flies). In the laboratory, tarsal contact with stimuli from gut bacteria elicited significantly more responses than did yeast stimuli. We discuss the significance of these findings in context with other studies in the field and identify targets for future work.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boaz Yuval ◽  
Paola Lahuatte ◽  
Arul J. Polpass ◽  
Charlotte Causton ◽  
Edouard Jurkevitch ◽  
...  

AbstractPhilornis downsi (Diptera: Muscidae) is a nest parasitic fly that has invaded the Galapagos archipelago and exerts an onerous burden on populations of endemic land birds. As part of an ongoing effort to develop tools for the integrated management of this fly, our objective was to determine its long and short-range responses to bacterial and yeast cues associated with adult P. downsi. We hypothesized that the bacterial and yeast communities will elicit attraction at distance through volatiles, and appetitive responses upon contact. Accordingly, we amplified bacteria from guts of adult field-caught individuals and bird feces, and yeasts from fermenting papaya juice (a known attractant of P. downsi), on selective growth media, and assayed the response of flies to these microbes or their exudates. In the field, we baited traps with bacteria or yeast and monitored adult fly attraction. In the laboratory, we used the Proboscis Extension Response (PER) to determine the sensitivity of males and females to tarsal contact with bacteria or yeast. Long range trapping efforts yielded two female flies over 112 trap nights (one in extracts from bird faeces and one in extracts from gut bacteria from adult flies). In the laboratory, tarsal contact with bacterial stimuli from gut bacteria from adult flies elicited significantly more responses than did yeast stimuli. We discuss the significance of these findings in context with other studies in the field and identify targets for future work.


Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Lasa ◽  
Laura Navarro-de-la-Fuente ◽  
Anne C. Gschaedler-Mathis ◽  
Manuel R. Kirchmayr ◽  
Trevor Williams

Specific ecological interactions between insects and microbes have potential in the development of targeted pest monitoring or control techniques for the spotted wing drosophilid, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura), an exotic invasive pest of soft fruit. To evaluate D. suzukii attraction to yeast species from preferred types of fruit, three yeasts were isolated from blackberry fruit and two yeasts from raspberry fruit and used to bait simple plastic bottle traps. Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Hanseniaspora uvarum were identified from blackberries, whereas a different H. uvarum strain was identified from raspberry. Yeast identification was based on sequence analysis of the D1/D2 domain of the large subunit 26S rRNA gene. Commercial baker’s yeast (S. cerevisiae) was similar or more effective for the capture of D. suzukii males and females than yeasts isolated from blackberry or raspberry when grown in sucrose. However, when grown in corn syrup, a strain of S. cerevisiae from blackberry captured the highest number of females and a strain of H. uvarum isolated from raspberry captured high numbers of males and females. Species of Candida, Hanseniaspora, and Pichia from a laboratory yeast collection did not outperform baker’s yeast in pairwise tests when grown in sucrose solution or yeast-peptone-dextrose medium. The raspberry strain of H. uvarum grown in corn syrup outperformed S. cerevisiae grown in sucrose, in terms of captures in baited traps under laboratory conditions. We conclude that yeast species, strain, and growth medium can have a marked influence on D. suzukii attraction to baited traps, a finding that could assist in the development of yeast-related monitoring or control techniques targeted at this pest.


Honey Bees ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 67-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Pham-Del√®gue ◽  
A Decourtye

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 832-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Pratavieira ◽  
Anally Ribeiro da Silva Menegasso ◽  
Thaisa Roat ◽  
Osmar Malaspina ◽  
Mario Sergio Palma

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 20180186
Author(s):  
Jo S. Hermansen ◽  
Jostein Starrfelt ◽  
Kjetil L. Voje ◽  
Nils C. Stenseth

Intralocus sexual conflicts arise whenever the fitness optima for a trait expressed in both males and females differ between the sexes and shared genetic architecture constrains the sexes from evolving independently towards their respective optima. Such sexual conflicts are commonplace in nature, yet their long-term evolutionary consequences remain unexplored. Using a Bayesian phylogenetic comparative framework, we studied the macroevolutionary dynamics of intersexual trait integration in stalk-eyed flies (Diopsidae) spanning a time frame of more than 25 Myr. We report that increased intensity of sexual selection on male eyestalks is associated with reduced intersexual eyestalk integration, as well as sex-specific rates of eyestalk evolution. Despite this, lineages where males have been under strong sexual selection for millions of years still exhibit high levels of intersexual trait integration. This low level of decoupling between the sexes may indicate that exaggerated female eyestalks are in fact adaptive—or alternatively, that there are strong constraints on reducing trait integration between the sexes. Future work should seek to clarify the relative roles of constraints and selection in contributing to the varying levels of intersexual trait integration in stalk-eyed flies, and in this way clarify whether sexual conflicts can act as constraints on adaptive evolution even on macroevolutionary time scales.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Alberto Laumann ◽  
Miguel Borges ◽  
Jeffrey R. Aldrich ◽  
Ashot Khrimian ◽  
Maria Carolina Blassioli-Moraes

The Neotropical broad-headed bug,Neomegalotomus parvus(Westwood), is adapted to various leguminous crops and is considered a pest in common bean and soybean. The chemical communication of this species was studied in order to identify an attractant pheromone. Males and females ofN. parvusproduce several short-chain esters and acids, and their antennae showed electrophysiological responses to five of these compounds, three common to both sexes (hexyl butanoate, 4-methylhexyl butanoate, and hexyl hexanoate), and two female-specific compounds (4-methylhexyl pentanoate and hexyl pentanoate). Both aeration extracts of females and a solution containing five synthetic compounds mimicking the natural blend were attractive to males and femalesN. parvusin a laboratory bioassay. Aspects of the chemical ecology of the broad-headed bugs and the possibility to use pheromone-baited traps in the field for monitoring are discussed.


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