ACOUSTIC TRAP FOR FEMALE MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLIES

Medflies (Ceratitis capitata) are among the world's most economically harmful pests. In addition, the costs of worldwide monitoring and control are expensive, exceeding $800 million per year in Israel and the U.S. alone. Efficient traps are vitally important tools for medfly quarantine and pest management activities. They are needed for control as well as early detection, for predicting dispersal patterns, and to estimate medfly abundance within infested regions. Efficient tools to attract and catch the primary target, namely reproductively viable females, are a particularly important need. The present research aimed to evaluate the attractiveness of male calling song and synthetic sounds to mate-seeking female medflies, as a contribution to the design and testing of a trap (patent pending) based on acoustic lures. In order to evaluate the adequacy of the experimental setup, the courtship behavior of female medflies in the presence and absence of calling male flies was observed. Male medfly calling song and synthetic tones were played at various intensities to laboratory-reared and wild female medflies during the morning and early afternoon periods of peak sexual activity. For most treatments, it was found that the laboratory and wild female flies were attracted to sites near broadcasting speakers more than to sites without sound. The strongest effect was with traps broadcasting 150 Hz signals at 67 dB sound pressure level, which attracted 28% more females than non-sound-baited traps. This study indicates that there is a possibility of using sound to enhance the attractiveness of traps to mate-seeking female medflies.