ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING OF VISUAL CUES IN THE FRUIT FLY PARASITOID DIACHASMISMORPHA LONGICAUDATA: TRAINING EFFORTS, DURATION OF THE MEMORY AND POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCE ON FEMALE’S FITNESS.

NUSSENBAUM, ANA L; DEVESCOVI F; BACHMANN GUILLERMO; PACELLI, FRANCO; SERGIO M. OVRUSKI; (VISCARRET, MARIANA; CLADERA, J; DF SEGURA

Congreso; /th International Entomophagous Insect Conference; 2023

The control of fruit flies of economic importance has been usually carried out using insecticides, which bears an unwanted effect on other species and the environment. Among other techniques, biological control is nowadays considered as a more adequate alternative in this sense. In Argentina, Ceratitis capitata and Anastrepha fraterculus are the two important fruit pests speciestarget species to be controlled, as they produce great losses for the fruticulture. Therefore, Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Dl) has been proposed as potential tol for the control agentof these pests. In the laboratory, we artificially rear these three species with experimental purposes. For each fly species we usually use a specific artificial larval diet that maximizes the yield of each colony. For the rearing of Dl, L3 larvae are exposed to adult parasitoids, which will parasitize them to produce the next generation. Our aim was to assess adult parasitoid quality parameters according to the fly species and the diet they were reared on in order to determine the best a combination of factors of diet and host that maximizes adult production and biological quality as biocontrol agentcharacteristics. Thus, using a factorial design with two diets and two fruit fly species we obtained four groups of parasitoids that were evaluated in their developmental time, flight ability, survival and fecundity. Results will be discussed considering the weight of the four types of non-parasitized pupae and the characterization of the nutritional profile of the two diets, the four type of host larvae and the four type of adult parasitoid.