Te. Shelly et al., Mating competitiveness of male oriental fruit flies from a translocation strain (Diptera : Tephritidae), ENV ENTOMOL, 29(6), 2000, pp. 1152-1156
A major advance in sterile insect release programs against tephritid fruit
fly pests has been the development of genetic sexing strains, which allow t
he production of males-only lines for field release. Genetic sexing strains
both reduce the costs associated with mass rearing and enhance the mating
effectiveness of sterile males. Research and application of genetic sexing
strains has been limited largely to the Mediterranean fruit fly. However, t
ranslocation-based genetic sexing strains based on pupal color mutants have
been constructed in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel).
Here, we describe the results of laboratory tests on B, dorsalis that compa
red the relative success of males from a translocation-based sexing strain
and wild males in mating competition for wild females. Additional tests exa
mined the effect of irradiation and exposure to methyl eugenol on the matin
g frequency of males from the genetic sexing strain.