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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Kearneysville, West Virginia » Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory » Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #325703
Title: Behavioral responses of Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) to visual stimuli under laboratory, semifield, and field conditions

Author
item Rice, Kevin
item Short, Brent
item Jones, Sharon
item Leskey, Tracy

Submitted to: Environmental Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/16/2016
Publication Date: 9/29/2016
Citation: Rice, K.B., Short, B.D., Jones, S.K., Leskey, T.C. 2016. Behavioral responses of Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) to visual stimuli under laboratory, semifield, and field conditions. Environmental Entomology. 45(6):1480-1488.

Interpretive Summary: Insects respond to specific visual cues to locate acceptable host plants. Visual stimuli that attract pest insects can be used to enhance trap captures. Currently, no effective monitoring traps exist for spotted wing drosophila (SWD), an invasive fruit fly species from Asia. In our study, we evaluated SWD preference to visual cues (color, shape, and size). Dark colored (red and black) spherical traps covered with a sticky coating captured more SWD compared with purple, orange, green, yellow, blue, or white spheres. Among shapes evaluated, SWD also showed a preference for sphere shaped objects compared with cubes, pyramids, inverted pyramids, and vertical or horizontal cylinders. Larger spherical objects, 10 cm or greater in diameter, also were more attractive compared with smaller objects of 2.5 cm diameter. Our results can be used to increase the attractiveness of SWD monitoring traps and establish alternative behavioral-based management methods.

Technical Abstract: Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is an invasive pest in the United States that attacks soft-skinned ripening fruit such as raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Little is known regarding specific cues D. suzukii utilizes to locate and select host fruit, and inconsistencies in monitoring trap performance have led to a need for improvement in monitoring and management techniques for D. suzukii. Our studies focused on identifying attractive visual cues for adult D. suzukii and incorporating these cues into a potential attract-and-kill tactic for D. suzukii management. We evaluated D. suzukii response to color, shape, and size-specific stimuli. For color, we evaluated 10.2 cm diam spheres painted black, red, purple, orange, green, yellow, blue, or white. Shape stimuli (254 cm3 SA) included sphere, cube, pyramid, inverted pyramid, vertical or horizontal cylinder, and were painted red. Size stimuli included red 2.5, 10.2, 15.2, and 25.4 cm diam spheres. Trials were conducted under laboratory, semi-field, and/or field trials. For color, adults appeared to prefer black and red spheres compared with all other colors evaluated. Among shapes, there was no significant preference, but numerically more adults were captured on spheres. For size, larger spheres captured significantly more D. suzukii compared with small 2.5 cm diam spheres. When red spheres coated with Tangletrap were deployed in association with raspberry plants bearing ripe fruit, we observed a significant reduction in infestation rates indicating that red spheres could potentially provide the basis for a behavioral strategy for management of D. suzukii.