Comparison of Two Synthetic Food-Odor Lures for Captures of Feral Mexican Fruit Flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in Mexico and Implications Regarding Use of Irradiated Flies to Assess Lure Efficacy

Authors: Robacker, David; Thomas, Donald

Submitted to: Journal of Economic Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/12/2007
Publication Date: 12/18/2007
Citation: Robacker, D.C., Thomas, D.B. 2007. Comparison of two synthetic food-odor lures for captures of feral Mexican fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in Mexico and implications regarding use of irradiated flies to assess lure efficacy. Journal of Economic Entomology. 100:1147-1152.

Interpretive Summary: The Mexican fruit fly and other fruit flies are among the most costly fruit pests in the world. Agricultural agencies must keep watch to ensure that these flies are not accidentally introduced into places where they do not occur naturally, or rise to damaging levels in areas where they maintain marginal populations. The principal tools for this job are traps to detect and measure fruit fly populations. The better the lure used in traps, the earlier flies can be detected or their populations assessed, and the easier it is to eradicate or at least control the outbreak. A synthetic lure called BioLure (Suterra, Inc., Bend, OR) has been gaining acceptance for trapping several pest fruit flies. This work compares effectiveness of BioLures with that of the AFF lure (Advanced Pheromone Technologies, Inc. Marylhurst, OR), a newer type of synthetic lure, for trapping wild Mexican fruit flies in Mexico. Results indicated that BioLures were more attractive than AFF lures in “wet” traps containing antifreeze to drown trapped flies, but AFF lures were equally attractive as BioLures in traps with water as the drowning agent or an “dry” yellow sticky traps. Because current trapping protocol calls for wet traps with antifreeze, BioLures are the lures of choice. Proper matching of lures with traps is essential for optimal detection, control and eradication of pest fruit flies.

Technical Abstract: Feral Mexican fruit flies (Anastrepha ludens Loew) were trapped in a citrus orchard in Mexico using two types of synthetic food-odor lures, Advanced Pheromone Technologies Anastrepha fruit fly (AFF) lure and Suterra’s BioLure 2-component (ammonim acetate and putrescine) MFF lure (BioLure), and three types of traps. In Multilure traps containing water with 0.01% Triton X-100R as a surfactant, BioLures captured about the same numbers of flies as AFF lures. In Multilure traps containing water with 10% propylene glycol based antifreeze, BioLures captured 2X and 5X more flies than AFF lures in two experiments. Although differences were observed in individual experiments, generally BioLures and AFF lures did not differ in attractiveness when used on two types of sticky traps. For traps baited with BioLures, Multilure traps captured more than 4X as many male and female flies as sticky traps. For traps baited with AFF lures, Multilure traps also capture more than 4X as many male flies as sticky traps, but sticky traps and Multilure traps did not differ with regard to capture of females. Multilure traps baited with BioLures captured a higher mean percentage of females (59%) than those baited with AFF lures (46%). Conversely, sticky traps baited with AFF lures captured a higher mean percentage of females (80%) than those with BioLures (61%). Sticky traps captured a higher percentage of females than Multilure traps. The most effective trap/lure combination was the Multilure trap baited with BioLure and containing antifreeze as the killing agent. Based on similar results from experiments in Mexico and Texas, the use of irradiated Mexican fruit flies in Texas to evaluate effectiveness of these types of lures for capture of feral flies in Multilure traps is justified. However, the same conclusion does not apply for sticky traps because results with yellow cylindrical sticky traps in Mexico differed from those in Texas.