Host fruit is known to strongly affect the performance of both fruit pests and their potential natural enemies. This is particularly important in the control of tephritid fruit flies, whose larvae develop inside the fruit and thus create a set of for...
The hypothesis of this study was that different plant hosts of the medfly Ceratitis capitata may cause variability as a prerequisite for its invasiveness. The main objective was to determine population variability based on medfly wing shape in three...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is an agricultural pest of a wide range of fruits. The advent of high-throughput sequencing has boosted the discovery of RNA viruses infecting insects. In this article, we aim to characterize...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is considered one of the most destructive fruit pests worldwide. Female medflies prefer to lay eggs in ripening, ripe, or overripe fruits. In deciduous orchards of temperate regions, fruitlets...
The parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Ashmead) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is increasingly being used in integrated pest management (IPM) programs as a biological control agent in order to suppress tephritid fruit flies of economic importance. I...
The Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) fruit fly pest has been widely ecologically controlled by means of using attractant substances. This study supports the idea that α-copaene, a naturally occurring substance found in numerous plants, might be u...
Biological control through the augmentative release of parasitoids is an important complementary tool that may be incorporated into other strategies for the eradication/eco-friendly control of pest fruit flies. However, not much information is availa...
Biological control using parasitoid wasps and the sterile insect technique (SIT) are environmentally sustainable strategies that can be integrated into fruit fly management programs. Both eco-friendly techniques have been applied independently agains...
Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (medfly) strongly affects Argentinean fruit production and export. Augmentative biological control using the exotic parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Ashmead) is currently applied to this problem. The ability to...
The use of more than one species to manage a single insect pest is a common practice among biological control programs. However, the beneficial effects of natural enemies are not always additive, which in many cases may be attributed to interspecific...
Alternative methods to achieve sustainable agricultural production while reducing the use of chemical pesticides, such as biological control, are increasingly needed. The exploitation of trait-mediated indirect interactions (TMIIs), in which pests mo...
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata Wied., is among the most serious pests in horticulture worldwide, due to its high reproductive potential, difficulty of control and broad polyphagy. The aim of this study was to measure—by means o...
Several artificial larval diets have been developed, evaluated and used for mass-rearing of the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Teprhitidae). There are several efforts to reduce the cost of rearing and optim...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) is a globally invasive pest that affects a wide range of fruit and vegetable crops. Identifying cost-effective attractants is essential for sustainable integrated pest management (IPM). This study expl...
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is most effective at large regional scales when applied within an area-wide framework. However, there is a need to investigate its feasibility at smaller scales, e.g., for emergency responses to local fruit fly inva...
Scientifically-based, tephritid fly host status determination lies at the heart of strategic regulatory decisions impinging on international fruit trade. Here we conducted intensive field and laboratory studies with peaches as controls, to determine...
The main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the insecticidal compound spinosad on the survival, reproduction, and immune functions of the Mediterranean fruit fly. The lethal and sub-lethal effects were determined on Ceratitis c...
Sexual signaling is a fundamental component of sexual behavior of Ceratitis capitata that highly determines males’ mating success. Nutritional status and age are dominant factors known to affect males’ signaling performance and define the female deci...
The present work was aimed to study the toxicity of the essential oils of three aromatic and medicinal plants on the tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta and the Medfly Ceratitis capitata as an alternative to conventional pesticides. We carried out a phyt...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann 1824; Diptera, Tephritidae), is considered one of the most important pests, infesting more than 300 species of fresh fruit and vegetables worldwide. The medfly is an important invasi...
Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae), or medfly, is an invasive pest widespread in Argentina, where standardized management methods, such as cultural and chemical controls, are commonly implemented. The success in controlling medfly populations...
A Decision Support System (DSS) was developed and evaluated to control the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata (Wiedermann), by incorporating a semi-automatic pest monitoring and a precision targeting approach in multi-varietal orcha...
Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) or medfly is a polyphagous pest of fruit crops worldwide. The Asian-native larval parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Ashmead) is mass-reared at the San Juan Biofactory and is currently released for medfly control...
Temperature and host fruit availability are key factors influencing the life history traits of the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) (Ceratitis capitata). This study examines how developmental temperature and host fruit type affect adult longevity and...
Mass trapping is an environmentally safe alternative to insecticide application for the Mediterranean fruit fly management. The selection of effective trap-attractant combinations for monitoring and mass trapping control remains challenging. The curr...
In this study, Magnolia citrata Noot and Chalermglin (Magnoliaceae) essential oil (MCEO) was evaluated for insecticidal activity against the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti and attractant activity for the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitat...
The present study analyzed the chemical composition of Juniperus foetidissima Willd. essential oils (EOs) and evaluated their attractancy and toxicity to two agriculturally important tephritid fruit flies. The composition of hydrodistilled EOs obtain...
Trapping is considered a powerful tool in the monitoring and control of fruit flies of high economic importance such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae). However, the cost of trapping and, in some cases, the safe...
The essential oil (EO) of Schinus areira exhibits a chemical composition dominated by monoterpene and sesquiterpene hydrocarbons, with α-phellandrene, limonene, α-pinene, and p-cymene as major constituents. This study aimed to evaluate th...
The olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae, is considered the main olive pest worldwide, and has been the target of biological control programmes through the release of the braconid parasitoid Psyttalia concolor. Laboratory tests were performed to evaluat...
The α6 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) has been proposed as the target for spinosad in insects. Point mutations that result in premature stop codons in the α6 gene of Ceratitis capitata flies have been previously a...
Understanding the seasonal dynamics inherent to non-crop host–fruit fly–parasitoid interactions is vitally important for implementing eco-friendly pest control strategies. This study assessed the abundance and seasonal infestation levels...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is a key pest of fruit crops in a wide range of climatic zone. Its economic importance is increasing due to its invasion and establishment in new geographical areas caused by global warming. G...
This study evaluates the potential of quantum dots (QDs) as a marking method for Mediterranean fruit flies (Ceratitis capitata) (Medfly) in comparison to traditional fluorescent powder. As a highly destructive pest impacting a wide variety of fruit c...
Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae) is responsible for extensive damage in agriculture with important economic losses. Several strategies have been proposed to control this insect pest including insecticides and the Sterile Insect Technique. Tr...
The Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is a significant pest of stone and pome fruit that causes considerable economic losses worldwide. Current control is primarily based on insecticides, which are often mixed with protein baits....
Invasive Tephritid fruit flies rank among the most destructive agricultural and horticultural pests worldwide. Heat treatment is commonly employed as a post-harvest method to exterminate fruit flies in fruits or vegetables. These pest species exhibit...
The temporal variation in pesticide residues in Kampos, of Chios Island, in Greece, was determined between June 2014 and October 2019. Monitoring of residues took place before and after the development of an Integrated Pest Management Strategy (IPMS)...
Area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes with a sterile insect technique component (SIT) are used to control populations of insect pests worldwide, including the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata. SIT consists of the mass re...
A major obstacle of sterile insect technique (SIT) programs is the availability of robust sex-separation systems for conditional removal of females. Sterilized male-only releases improve SIT efficiency and cost-effectiveness for agricultural pests, w...
Ceratitis capitata, known as the Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly), is a major dipteran pest significantly impacting fruit and vegetable farming. Currently, its control heavily relies mainly on chemical insecticides, which pose health risks and have e...
The essential oils (EOs) were isolated by hydrodistillation from wild and cultivated Pistacia lentiscus L. var. chia—mastic gum tree (Anacardiaceae) from two natural habitats, namely from Cesme–Uzunkoy (1) and Mordogan (2), and one cultiv...
The management of the medfly, Ceratitis capitata, in Spanish citrus crops relies mainly on the use of insecticides and the release of sterile males. However, the development of resistance to different insecticides in field populations, including lamb...
Cold tolerance of adult medflies has been extensively studied but the effect of subfreezing temperatures on the immature stages remains poorly investigated, especially as far as different populations are regarded. In this study, we estimated the acut...
A taste component is implicated in the oro-sensory detection of dietary lipids and free fatty acids seem to be involved in fatty food recognition. Bottarga, the salted and semi-dried ovary product of mullet (Mugil spp.), is a rich-fat food. A compara...
The mass release of irradiated insects to reduce the size of agricultural pest populations of the same species has a more than 50-year record of success. Using these techniques, insect pests can be suppressed without necessarily dispersing chemical i...
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is considered one of the most important phytophagous pests worldwide. In Croatia, it severely affects the fresh fruit production in Dalmatia, and a national suppressio...
Samples from three different mating stages (before, during and after mating) of the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata were used in this experiment. Samples obtained from whole insects were subjected to extraction with the two mixtures of sol...
In the model system for genetics, Drosophila melanogaster, sexual differentiation and male courtship behavior are controlled by sex-specific splicing of doublesex (dsx) and fruitless (fru). In vitro and in vivo studies showed that female-specific Tra...