BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS OR KISS OF DEATH? SURVIVAL AND SEXUAL PERFORMANCE OF PROTEIN-FED, STERILE MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLIES (DIPTERA: TEPHRITIDAE)

By B. Yuval, M. Maor, Karmit Levy, R. Kaspi, Phillip W Taylor, T. Shelly. 2007

101 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The sterile insect technique (SIT) is increasingly being used around the world to control Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae), the Mediterranean fruit fly as part of an area-wide integrated approach. One option that may improve the effectiveness of the SIT, by increasing the sexual competitiveness of released sterile males, consists of feeding males protein during the post-teneral stage, a diet that increases sexual performance of wild males. We examine the effects of diet on the successive hurdles males must overcome in order to inseminate females, i.e., joining leks, copulating females, having their sperm stored and inhibition of female remating. In addition, we address the effects of diet on post-release foraging success, longevity, and the ability to withstand starvation. While protein feeding universally increases the sexual success of wild males, its effect on sterile males varies with strain, experimental settings, and environmental conditions. In some cases, treatments that resulted in the best sexual performance were significantly associated with increased vulnerability to starvation. However, no particular diet affected the ability of sterile males to find nutrients in the field when these where available. We suggest it may be better to release relatively short-lived flies that are highly competitive, rather than long-lived, sexually ineffective ones.

Subfields: Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3362c425244b926b0f66afb8b3c94725c110a2c9

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Citations in the corpus

Potential for pre‐release diet supplements to increase the sexual performance and longevity of male Queensland fruit flies (2008, background): “Adult nutrition plays a decisive role in the maturation, sexual performance and longevity of many tephritid flies and is an especially promising prospect for the enhancement of tephritid flies released in SIT ( Yuval et al. , 2002, 2007 ).”
Female mating failure and the failure of ‘mating’ in sterile insect programs (2013, methodology): “Briefly, the approaches to manipulating males include altering the olfactory environment experienced by the males following eclosion, providing high-quality post-teneral nutrition (Yuval et al., 2007), inoculating males with probiotic bacteria, and (in species that experience a lengthy pre-reproduct”
Bacterially enriched diet improves sexual performance of sterile male Mediterranean fruit flies (2011, background): “These include manipulation of the pre-release diet (Yuval and Hendrichs 2000; Yuval et al. 2002, 2007; Maor et al. 2004; Barry et al. 2007; Gavriel et al. 2009, 2010), juvenile hormone treatments (Teal et al. 2000, 2007; Shelly et al. 2009) and probiotic diets (Niyazi et al. 2004; Ben-Yosef et al.…”
Improving sterile male performance in support of programmes integrating the sterile insect technique against fruit flies (2013, background): “…Utgés et al. 2013) Protein-rich post-teneral diets did not adversely affect survival and movement in the field of sterile B. tryoni and C. capitata males (Yuval et al. 2007; Gavriel et al. 2010; Taylor et al. 2013) In the laboratory, protein-fed males lived significantly longer than sugar-fed…”