Abstract
Knowledge of the population fluctuation of a pest in an orchard allows the producer preventing and making use of techniques that control the insect pest before it causes economic damages. The objective of the present work was to verify fruit fly species population dynamics in a commercial of Psidium guajava L. (Myrtaceae) orchard in the Curimataú microregion of Paraíba, also to characterize the community of fruit flies through faunistic analysis as well. Fruits were collected biweekly, the total was 24 collections between August 2014 and July 2015 in the municipality of Nova Floresta-PB. Fruits were preferentially collected mature or at the beginning of maturation, differentiating fruits harvested on the soil, plants, and through PET traps containing different food attractants. After collection, fruits were kept in plastic trays filled with a layer of two centimeters of sterilized sand and covered with fabric ‘voil’. The trays were labeled with the field data and placed in a greenhouse. Past the period of 15-25 days the fruits, already in the stage of decomposition were examined in order to collect pupae and larvae of 3rd instar. A total of 462 specimens of fruit flies were collected in 12 months sampling period, they were collected from fruits gathered from the ground and from the tree, and through trapping, being 209 males and 253 females, all collected in P. guajava. From the results obtained during the sampling period, a total of four species were recorded by fruit collection and six species by a trap. A new specimen of Anastrepha was found that there was no register in Paraíba yet, Anastrepha hadropickeli Canal, Uramoto and Zucchi (2013), as well as a Rhagoletis sp. (Loew).
Highlights
Knowledge of fruit flies population dynamics and faunal analyses have fundamental importance for all producers who grow fruit in the world, because through analysis of these parameters producers can get answers from within the orchard, as an example, which pest is considered as key plague, knowing seasonal period that occurs a particular species of fruit fly, availability of food and even know the influence of environmental factors such as rainfall, temperature, and relative air humidity exert in the orchard
Introduced hosts are the most infested by Ceratitis capitata Wiedemann (1824), while natives are the most infested by Anastrepha (Malavasi & Morgante, 1980)
As for the specific population fluctuation of adult fruit flies related to the average monthly precipitation, in which the species Anastrepha sororcula Zucchi (1979) occurred more frequently during the sampling period with a population peak in the months of June and July 2015, when precipitation was around 60 to 80 mm (Figure 1)
Summary
Knowledge of fruit flies population dynamics and faunal analyses have fundamental importance for all producers who grow fruit in the world, because through analysis of these parameters producers can get answers from within the orchard, as an example, which pest is considered as key plague, knowing seasonal period that occurs a particular species of fruit fly, availability of food and even know the influence of environmental factors such as rainfall, temperature, and relative air humidity exert in the orchard Having these answers, producer adopts management practices that allow reducing usage of agrochemicals and favoring regional and local biodiversity. Host availability is a factor that influences infestation levels, having a proportional increase in population and infestation (Malavasi & Morgante, 1980). The existence of a great diversity of hosts with fruits maturing in different seasons of the year keeps high the density of these Tephritidae (Raga et al, 1996)
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