Most agricultural pests are poikilothermic species expected to respond to climate change. Currently, they are a tremendous burden because of the high losses they inflict on crops and livestock. Smallholder farmers in developing countries of Africa are likely to suffer more under these changes than farmers in the developed world because more severe climatic changes are projected in these areas. ...

BACKGROUND The IAEA colony is the only one available for mass rearing of Glossina pallidipes, a vector of human and animal African trypanosomiasis in eastern Africa. This colony is the source for Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programs in East Africa. The source population of this colony is unclear and its genetic diversity has not previously been evaluated and compared to field populations. ...

South Africa is the 13th largest producer and second exporter of citrus fruit globally. The false codling moth, Thaumatotibia leucotreta, flies, Ceratitis capitata, C. rosa Bactrocera dorsalis, can potentially infest therefore pose a phytosanitary risk for export markets. Consequently, wide range postharvest treatments disinfestation from these pests have been investigated. These include cold t...

A partial cDNA clone for the 48,000 dalton yolk polypeptide gene from Anastrepha suspensa was isolated from a cDNA expression library using a yolk polypeptide antibody probe and hybridization to the Drosophila melanogaster yolk protein 1 gene. The sequenced DNA has greatest homology to the yolk protein genes from Ceratitis capitata, D. melanogaster, and Calliphora erythrocephala and, similar to...

The Hawaiian HI-LAB strain is the oldest mass-reared strain of Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wied.), in the world, and recent laboratory and field data show that HI-LAB males perform poorly in mating competition against wild males. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the mating performance of HILAB males could be improved by a single outcrossing event with wild fli...

Fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) harbor stable bacterial communities in their digestive system, composed mainly of members of the Enterobacteriaceae. However, the Enterobacteriaceae are not the sole community in this habitat. We examined the hypothesis that Pseudomonas spp. form a cryptic community in the gut of Ceratitis capitata, the Mediterranean fruit fly ('medfly'). Suicide polymerase re...

Biological invasions generally start from low initial population sizes, leading to reduced genetic variation in nuclear and especially mitochondrial DNA. Consequently, genetic approaches for the study of invasion history and population structure are difficult. An extreme example is the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Medfly), for which successive invasions during this century have ...

Mortality rates were measured over the lifetime of 65,000 female Mediterranean fruit flies, Ceratitis capitata, maintained in either all-female (virgin) cages or cages with equal initial numbers of males, to determine the effect of sexual activity and mating on the mortality trajectory of females at older ages. Although a greater fraction of females maintained in all-female (virgin) cages survi...

Microorganisms are acknowledged for their role in shaping insects' evolution, life history and ecology. Previous studies have shown that microbial communities harbored within insects vary through ontogenetic development and among insects feeding on different host-plant species. In this study, we characterized the bacterial microbiota of the highly polyphagous Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis ...

Fly-to-fly transmission of conidia of the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae and the effect of fungal infection on the reproductive potential of females surviving infection were investigated in three fruit fly species, Ceratitis cosyra, C. fasciventris, and C. capitata. The number of conidia picked up by a single fruit fly was determined in C. cosyra. The initial uptake (Day 0) of c...