History and Development of Food-Based Attractants

Abstract

Adult tephrids require sugar and protein for survival and for development of eggs, and volatile chemicals from these substances are the basis for food-based lures developed as baits for these pests. In this chapter, we discuss food-based lures that mimic food sources for adults other than host fruit. These have been primarily nitrogen sources that provide the protein needed by adult flies, although non-nitrogen-containing volatile chemicals are also included in this category. After male lures, food-based lures have been the predominant attractants used in traps for tephritid fruit flies. Although typically not as powerful as male lures, food-based lures have several advantages over male-specific attractants. They can be used for species for which there are no male lures known; they capture both females and males of target species; they tend to be female-biased, that is, they capture a higher percentage of females than males; and, at least for the Mediterranean fruit fly, traps baited with food-based lures tend to capture flies earlier than traps baited with male lure. There has been a long history of research on the development of food-based attractants for pest tephritids. Several review articles have documented the early history, which started with investigations of sugar-based food lures and lead to the development of the liquid protein baits and synthetic protein-based food lures, the standard food-lures that are currently in use. In this chapter, we discuss the development of and, as much as possible, the diversity of food-based lures that have been tested and/or are used in traps for pest tephritids. Future research directions are also discussed.