ACOUSTIC TRAP FOR FEMALE MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLIES

Abstract

Medflies (Ceratitis capitata) are among the worlds most economically harmful pests. In addition, the costs ofworldwide monitoring and control are expensive, exceeding $800 million per year in Israel and the U.S. alone. Efficient trapsare vitally important tools for medfly quarantine and pest management activities. They are needed for control as well as earlydetection, for predicting dispersal patterns, and to estimate medfly abundance within infested regions. Efficient tools toattract and catch the primary target, namely reproductively viable females, are a particularly important need. The presentresearch aimed to evaluate the attractiveness of male calling song and synthetic sounds to mate-seeking female medflies, asa contribution to the design and testing of a trap (patent pending) based on acoustic lures. In order to evaluate the adequacyof the experimental setup, the courtship behavior of female medflies in the presence and absence of calling male flies wasobserved. Male medfly calling song and synthetic tones were played at various intensities to laboratory-reared and wildfemale medflies during the morning and early afternoon periods of peak sexual activity. For most treatments, it was foundthat the laboratory and wild female flies were attracted to sites near broadcasting speakers more than to sites without sound.The strongest effect was with traps broadcasting 150 Hz signals at 67 dB sound pressure level, which attracted 28% morefemales than non-sound-baited traps. This study indicates that there is a possibility of using sound to enhance theattractiveness of traps to mate-seeking female medflies.