Wind effects on individual male and female Bactrocera jarvisi (Diptera: Tephritidae) tracked using harmonic radar

Authors: WELTY PEACHEY, ALLYSEN - Eastern Mennonite University; MOSES, ETHAN - Bridgewater College; JOHNSON, ADESOLA - Eastern Mennonite University; LEHMAN, MEREDITH - Eastern Mennonite University; YODER, JAMES - Eastern Mennonite University; DE FAVERI, STEFANO - Department Of Agriculture And Fisheries; CHEESMAN, JODIE - Department Of Agriculture And Fisheries; Manoukis, Nicholas; Siderhurst, Matthew

Submitted to: Environmental Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/11/2024
Publication Date: 10/28/2024
Citation: Welty Peachey, A.M., Moses, E.R., Johnson, A.J., Lehman, M.G., Yoder, J.M., De Faveri, S.G., Cheesman, J., Manoukis, N., Siderhurst, M.S. 2024. Wind effects on individual male and female Bactrocera jarvisi (Diptera: Tephritidae) tracked using harmonic radar. Environmental Entomology. 54(1):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvae108.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvae108

Interpretive Summary: Fruit flies are major horticultural pests throughout the tropics and subtropics. Recent advances have made it possible to track individual fruit flies as they move around farms, urban areas, and other habitats. Tracking fruit flies allows us to better understand their biology and therefore how to better control them. For example, understanding how fruit flies move on farms will allow the optimization of trap placement or kill sprays. Information on how flies move in different environments under different conditions will allow more effective responses to pest fly invasions and outbreaks. This study followed Jarvis’s fruit fly as they moved around a papaya field. We found that male and female flies move in similar ways, wind direction effects the direction of fly movements, and flies move differently when moving within a tree verses when they move between trees. Data from this study may help enhance current surveillance, control, and eradication methods, such as optimizing trap placements and pesticide applications, determining release sites for parasitoids, and' setting quarantine boundaries after incursions.

Technical Abstract: Wind affects the movement of most volant insects. While the effects of wind on dispersal are relatively well understood at the population level, how wind influences the movement parameters of individual insects in the wild is less clear. Tephritid fruit flies, such as Bactrocera jarvisi, are major horticultural pests worldwide and while most tephritids are nondispersive when host plants are plentiful, records exist for potentially wind-assisted movements up to 200 km. In this study, harmonic radar (HR) was used to track the movements of both male and female lab-reared' B. jarvisi' in a papaya field. Overall flight directions were found to be correlated with wind direction, as were the subset of between-tree movements, while within-tree movements were not. Further, the effect of wind direction on fly trajectories varied by step-distance but not strongly with wind speed. Mean path distance, step-distance, flight direction, turning angle, and flight propensity did not vary by sex. Both male and female movements are well fit by two-state hidden Markov models further supporting the observation that B. jarvisi move differently within (short steps with random direction) and between (longer more directional steps) trees. Data on flight directionality and step-distances determined in this study provide parameters for models that may help enhance current surveillance, control, and eradication methods, such as optimizing trap placements and pesticide applications, determining release sites for parasitoids, and'setting quarantine boundaries after incursions.