Abstract
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata Wied., is among the most serious pests in horticulture worldwide, due to its high reproductive potential, difficulty of control and broad polyphagy. The aim of this study was to measure—by means of the electroantennogram recordings— the antennal olfactory sensitivity of virgin, mated, male, female, lab-reared and wild C. capitata following stimulation with fruit and leaf headspace of some host-plants: clementine, orange, prickly pear, lemon and apple. The results show that: (a) lab-reared mated males are more sensitive to host-plant fruit and leaf headspace than females, while the opposite was true for wild insects; (b) antennae of wild virgin males were more sensitive than the mated ones, while no difference was observed among lab-reared medflies; (c) lab-reared virgin females were more sensitive than mated ones, while few differences were found within wild medflies; (d) in mated insects, lab-reared males were more sensitive to both host-plant fruits and leaves than the wild ones, while the opposite was found for females. Taken together, these results show that the olfactory sensitivity to host-plant odors differs between virgin and mated and lab-reared and wild flies.
Highlights
In animals, the ability to identify mating partners, oviposition sites and food sources is strongly influenced by information arising from their chemical senses, olfaction and taste [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
These results show that males are, in general, more sensitive than females for laboratory-reared population (LP) insects, while the opposite was found for wild population (WP)-mated insects
[25,67] is strongly conditioned by the information coming from the olfactory system, the main goal of this study was to evaluate whether the olfactory sensitivity of adult insects of C. capitata towards the complex odor of fruits and leaves of some host-plants depends on sex, the
Summary
The ability to identify mating partners, oviposition sites and food sources is strongly influenced by information arising from their chemical senses, olfaction and taste [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. They interact with ORs and the chemical information is transformed into a train of action potentials that reaches the antennal lobes—the first region of the central nervous system—where the olfactory information is processed [33,34,35]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
