Sex-biased trap capture and odor-stimulated upwind flight in the field by Rhagoletis mendax (Diptera: Tephritidae)

2001 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.P.S. Kuenen ◽  
P.J. Silk

The bluebeny maggot, Rhagoletis mendax Curran, is a primary insect pest of low bush blueberries, Vaccinium angustifolium Ait. (Ericaceae), in eastern Canada. Eggs are laid in ripening berries and mature larvae emerge from the berries to pupate in the soil. Adult flies can be controlled with insecticides (Wood et al. 1983) and (or) cultural control by bum or flail-mow pruning of bushes. Pruned plants do not bear fruit the season after pruning, and this rotation of fruit and nonfruit years is believed to reduce fly populations by limiting food availability (Lathrop 1952). Adult flies can be monitored by capture on yellow-panel sticky traps or red-sphere traps (Prokopy and Coli 1978; Wood et al. 1983; Neilson et al. 1984). In this study, we focused on the sex ratio of R. mendax flies captured on baited and unbaited yellow-panel sticky traps (Pheroco® AM traps) and on the orientation behavior of flies toward wind-vane traps.

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shehzad ◽  
Muhammad Tariq ◽  
Tariq Mukhtar ◽  
Asim Gulzar

Abstract Background The diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae), is a noxious pest of cruciferous crops all over the world causing serious economic damage. Management of insect pest generally depends on chemical control; however, due to development of resistance against all types of insecticides, alternative approaches especially utilization of a microbial agent is inevitable. Results Potential of 2 entomopathogenic fungi (EPF), viz., Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae, was evaluated against 2nd and 3rd larval instars of P. xylostella by adopting leaf dip and direct spraying methods under laboratory conditions. Significant mortality rate was achieved by each fungus under adopted methodologies. However, B. bassiana was found to be more effective in both conditions than M. anisopliae. Highest mean corrected mortality (77.80%) was recorded, when spores of B. bassiana were sprayed on the 2nd instar larvae (LC50=1.78×104/ml) after the 6th day of treatment. Similarly, incase of M. anisopliae LC50 for the 2nd instar at the same methodology was 2.78×104/ml with a mortality percentage of 70.0%. Offspring sex ratio was non-significantly related to treatment concentration and methodology, except for the control. Conclusion Beauveria bassiana and M. anisopliae had potential to suppress P. xylostella infestations when applied appropriately. Present findings suggested that B. bassiana and M. anisopliae when sprayed on immatures of host insect had more effect as compared to leaf dip procedure. Furthermore, no significant effect of concentrations was observed on sex ratio.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. BONNEAU ◽  
M. HUSNI ◽  
L. BEAUDOIN-OLLIVIER ◽  
JOKO SUSILO

We demonstrated experimentally that Sufetula, a root-mining insect, has a depressive effect on coconut yields on peat soils. The impact of the pest resulted in a shortfall in earnings that warranted taking control measures. We considered control methods suitable for rehabilitating infested mature coconut plantings and for preserving young coconut plantings. Currently, cultural control is the only effective method. It involves eliminating all identified shelters for the adult insect, i.e. fern cover and heaps of coconut waste (dry fronds and husks). The aim is to achieve totally bare soil, with moss cover that does not attract the pest, or planted with an unattractive intercrop such as pineapple.


Author(s):  
A. A. Oso ◽  
G. O. Awe

Aim: Information on the influence of water availability during different seasons of rainfed or irrigated agriculture as it relates to insect pest population build-up in crops could assist in the development of integrated pest management. A study was therefore conducted to investigate effects of spacing, pest infestation and control on cucumber under rainfed and irrigated conditions. Place and Duration of Study: At the Teaching and Research Farm, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria during the 2016/2017 rainy and dry seasons. Methodology: The experiment was laid out using randomized complete block design (RCBD) in a split-plot arrangement in five replications, with spacing (60 x 60 cm, 60 x 90 cm and 60 x 120 cm) as the main plot treatments and the sub-plot treatments were different pest control strategies. The pest control strategies include synthetic insecticide (Lambda-cyhalothrin), botanical insecticide (Anogeissus leiocarpus) and control. Growth parameters and yield attributes were recorded. Insect pest occurrence, their build-up and percentage infestation on cucumber and the efficacy of the management strategies were monitored. Results: The results showed that yield was enhanced in irrigated system with the widest spacing of 60 x 120 cm botanical treatment interaction. Bemisia tabaci was the most prominent insect pest attacking cucumber under irrigated system. Conclusion: Other cultural control practices such as the use of trap crops with little or no financial implication should also be added to botanical pesticides as an integrated pest management tactic for effective management and control of the pest.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 117954331985796
Author(s):  
Dorys T Chirinos ◽  
Takumasa Kondo

The guava cottony scale, Capulinia linarosae Kondo & Gullan (Hemiptera: Eriococcidae), is an important pest of guava, Psidium guajava L. (Myrtaceae) in northern Colombia and Venezuela. A species of Metaphycus (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) is the only known primary parasitoid associated with this insect pest. The parasitoid is herein described as M. marensis Chirinos & Kondo, sp. nov., based on morphological characteristics of the adult female and male. Biological studies on adult longevity, fecundity, host preference, and sex ratio were conducted. The maximum longevity of the female and the male were 8.0 and 6.5 days, respectively, when fed with diluted honey. On average, a fed mated female laid approximately 40 eggs. Adult females of M. marensis were shown to prefer to parasitize 11- to 15-day-old adult females of C. linarosae and do not parasitize first-instar nymphs of the host eriococcid. The female-to-male sex ratio of the parasitoid was 2.24: 1. When ovipositing females of M. marensis were given only small-sized individuals (second-instar nymphs) of C. linarosae, generally the resulting progeny was a single male wasp. This parasitoid species has arrhenotokous reproduction and is a facultative gregarious parasitoid. These results show a short adult longevity, as well as a relatively low fecundity of the female compared with studies conducted on other Metaphycus species. This study provides essential baseline information for future biological control programmes for C. linarosae.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 18-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oladele Abiodun Olaniran ◽  
Samuel Adelani Babarinde ◽  
Adeola Foluke Odewole ◽  
Peter Ademola Aremu ◽  
Kehinde Popoola

Surveys were carried out in five local government areas of Ogbomoso Agricultural Zone Nigeria during planting season in 2010 to investigate rural farmers perceptions and management practices of insect pests of fruit vegetables. The survey involved 150 randomly selected farmers who were interviewed using structured questionnaire. Fruit vegetables planted by the farmers were okra, tomatoes, pepper and garden egg. Reasons given by farmers for cultivating fruit vegetables were significantly favored by age category, educational qualification, and secondary occupation of farmers (x2 = 4.757, P = 0.029). Field insect pests were perceived as the major production constraint to fruit vegetables in this zone. Majority of the farmer estimated 78.4 % rated insect pest as the most serious pest infesting fruit vegetables, the insect pests were grasshopper (Orthoptera), beetles (Coleoptera) and caterpillar (Lepidoptera). Integrated pest management module consisted basically of chemical and cultural control strategies, with weeding, shifting cultivation and crop rotation as main cultural control methods. More than 76.7 % of the farmers make use of cultural control because of unavailability and cost of chemical insecticides. Only 23.3 % had access to chemical insecticides in controlling insect pest of fruit vegetables.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (04) ◽  
pp. 394-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia-Lin Zheng ◽  
Kai Lin ◽  
Zong-You Huang ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Zhen-De Yang ◽  
...  

AbstractEnvironmental characteristics (for example, temperature, photoperiod) as seasonal cues can affect the offspring sex ratio and reproductive tactics of many hymenopteran insects. Leptocybe invasa Fisher & La Salle is the most critical invasive insect pest of Eucalyptus spp. in the world and displays thelytokous reproduction. In the current study, we studied the effects of temperature and photoperiod on offspring sex ratio and reproductive tactics in L. invasa. Results show that sex ratio (female: male) of L. invasa was under 15, 25 and 35 °C with both L 12: D 12 and L 16: D 8, and cold and thermal acclimation were 74.5:1, 71.0:1, 59.0:0, 17.3:1, 53.0:0, 64.0:0, 47.0:1 and 56.0:0, respectively, which was highly significantly female biased and with no significant difference due to temperature or photoperiod. Offspring virgin females oviposited and induced the bump-shaped galls on plants under the same conditions as described above. Constant temperature, photoperiod and their interaction, and cold and thermal acclimation had no significant effect on the infestation rates of Eucalyptus branches induced by offspring virgin females. Thus, temperature, photoperiod and cold and thermal acclimation did not influence female-biased sex ratio and tactics with thelytokous reproduction of offspring females in L. invasa.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippos Aris Papathanos ◽  
Nikolai Windbichler

AbstractCRISPR-based synthetic sex ratio distorters, that operate by shredding the X-chromosome during male meiosis, are promising tools for the area-wide control of harmful insect pest or disease vector species. However, the selection of gRNA targets, in the form of high-copy sequence repeats on the X chromosome of a given species, is difficult since such repeats are not accurately resolved in genome assemblies and can’t be assigned to chromosomes with confidence. We have therefore developed the redkmer computational pipeline, designed to identify short and highly-abundant sequence elements occurring uniquely on the X-chromosome. Redkmer was designed to use as input exclusively raw WGS data from males and females. We tested redkmer with suitable short and long read WGS data ofAn. gambiae, the major vector of human malaria, in which the X-shredding paradigm was originally developed. Redkmer establishes long reads as chromosomal proxies with excellent correlation to the genome assembly and uses them to rank X-candidate kmers for their level of X-specificity and abundance. Redkmer identified a high-confidence set of 25-mers, many of which belong to previously known X-chromosome specific repeats ofAn. gambiae, including the ribosomal gene array and the selfish genetics elements harbored within it. WGS data from a control strain in which these repeats are also present on the Y chromosome confirmed the elimination of these kmers in the filtering steps. Finally, we show that redkmer output can be linked directly to gRNA selection and can also inform gRNA off-target prediction. The redkmer pipeline is designed to enable the generation of synthetic sex ratio distorters for the control of harmful insect species of medical or agricultural importance. It proceeds from WGS input data to deliver candidate X-specific CRISPR gRNA candidate target sequences. In addition the output of redkmer, including the prediction of chromosomal origin of single-molecule long reads and chromosome specific kmers, could also be used for the characterization of other biologically relevant sex chromosome sequences, a task that is frequently hampered by the repetitiveness of sex chromosome sequence content.


2020 ◽  
Vol 113 (5) ◽  
pp. 2380-2389
Author(s):  
Francis A Drummond ◽  
Judith A Collins

Abstract Rhagoletis mendax Curran (the blueberry maggot fly) is a major pest of wild blueberry. It is a direct pest of the fruit. Females lay eggs in fruit resulting in infestations of larvae unacceptable to most consumers. Three field perimeter interception tactics were tested for control of R. mendax in wild blueberry, Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton (Ericales: Ericaceae), between 2000 and 2010. We investigated field perimeter deployment of baited, insecticide-treated, green spheres (2000–2005), baited, yellow Trécé PHEROCON AM traps (2005 and 2006), and baited, Hopper Finder, sticky barrier tape (2008–2010). Only the Hopper Finder tape provided significant reduction in R. mendax adults and fruit infestation over the 3-yr field study. However, the reduction in fruit infestation compared with control plots was only 48.2 ± 7.3%, a level of reduction in damage that would be unsuitable for many commercial wild blueberry growers as a stand-alone tactic, but could be an important reduction as part of a multiple tactic IPM strategy. In addition, we constructed an agent-based computer simulation model to assess optimal trap placement between three patterns: 1) a single row of traps along field perimeter; 2) a double row of traps along the field perimeter at half the density of the single row; and 3) a grid of traps spread throughout the field but with the largest distance between traps. We found that the single row deployment pattern of traps was the best for reducing immigration of R. mendax adults into simulated fields.


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