Towards improving sterile insect technique: Exposure to orange oil compounds increases sexual signalling and longevity in Ceratitis capitata males of the Vienna 8 GSS.

Towards improving sterile insect technique: Exposure to orange oil compounds increases sexual signalling and longevity in Ceratitis capitata males of the Vienna 8 GSS.

Blog Article

The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is a notorious insect pest causing huge economic losses worldwide.The sterile insect technique (SIT) is widely used for its control.Using sexually mature sterilized males of the Vienna 8 (tsl) strain in the laboratory, we explored whether exposure of males to citrus Model Paint compounds (separately or in a mixture) affects their sexual behaviour and if nutritional conditions and age modulate those effects.Exposed males exhibited increased sexual signalling here compared to unexposed ones, particularly when fed a rich adult diet.Interestingly, and for the first time reported in medfly, exposure of Vienna 8 males to a mixture of citrus compounds increases longevity under poor adult diet conditions.

We discuss the possible associated mechanisms and provide some practical implications of our results towards improving the effectiveness of SIT.