This is an example of an observational study involving two variables of primary interest and several supplementary variables; these supplementary variables are ones that might affect the response variable and might also be correlated with the explanatory variable. The intent of the statistical analysis therefore is to produce the best possible description of the relationship between the two int...

I congratulate the authors for a veritable tour-de-force in which they review an impressive amount of literature and consider a wide variety of Bayesian joint models for the medfly data. The authors (henceforth referred to as HBJ) also propose a model selection criterion based on predictive power. I have greatly enjoyed reading the paper and, although a number of issues have raised my interest,...

This study shows that the fruit fly, Ceratitis rosa (Karsch), has a significantly longer life span than the medfly, C. capitata (Wiedemann); the species used as a model organism for the demographics of insect aging. This was somewhat surprising given that both have similar distributions and overlapping niches. We postulate that the greater longevity of C. rosa is related to the fact that it can...

The Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is one of the principal exotic pests affecting Brazilian production in the northeastern and southeastern regions of Brazil. In the south, it is has potential as a serious threat to temperate-climate fruit farms, since it is already found in urban and suburban communities in this region. We studied the biological c...

Male Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) used their aristae to repeatedly tap the female, usually on her aristae, during the second stage of head rocking courtship. The male’s antennae moved in an apparently exploratory manner earlier in head rocking. Reduced rates of copulation followed removal of male and female aristae, supporting the idea that tapping with the aristae is a...

The braconid wasp, Fopius arisanus (Sonan), a biological control agent for Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), was studied in coffee, Coffea arabica L. Fopius arisanus, comprised 79.3% of the total parasitoids (7,014) recovered from fruits collected at three small coffee farms. Data from seasonal host/parasitoid studies at a large coffee plantation also suggested that the m...

Seasonal long-distance migration is likely to be experienced in a contrasted manner by juvenile, immature and adult birds, leading to variations in migratory routes, timing and behaviour. We provide the first analysis of late summer movements and autumn migration in these three life stages, which were tracked concurrently using satellite tags, geolocators or GPS recorders in a long-ranging migr...