Remating behavior of wild Ceratitis capitata (Diptera:Tephritidae) females mated with wild or laboratory males

JORGE L. CLADERA; MARÍA T. VERA; GRACIELA CALCAGNO; JUAN C. VILARDI; ERIC STOLAR; DIEGO F. SEGURA; NATALIA PETIT-MARTY; PAULA GÓMEZ CENDRA; ARMANDO ALLINGHI; GABRIELA BONPLAND; MARCELA RODRIGUERO; FLAVIA KRSTICEVIC; LAURA HANSEN; GONZALO SEGADE; KARINA BARBORINI; TAMARA HEER; DONALD O. MCINNIS

Mendoza

Congreso; 4th Meeting of the Working Group on Fruit Flies of the Western Hemisphere; 2001

The remating behavior of wild Ceratitis capitata females during a single day was examined following initial matings to either laboratory or wild male flies in Argentina. Laboratory males tested were from the pupal color sexing strain, Seib 6-96 (irradiated males only), or Cast 191 sw sexing strain (both irradiated and non-irradiated males). Observations were made in field cages over a period of 10 hrs per day. The percenatges of mating and remating were 45.27% ± 9.96 and 7.18 ± 12.55 (Mean ± SD) respectively. Females tended to remate more if they mated first with a laboratory male compared to a wild male, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant. In general, females that remated started and ended their first mating before females that did not remate, and the former’s first mating was relatively short. Nonetheless, it was observed that there was no difference in duration of copula for remated or non-remated females if one considers only females first mated to wild males. Females mated initially to wild males had the longest avg. refractory period (1:58hrs ± 1:40) which was statistically longer than the shortest refractory period for irradiated Cast 191 (0:52hrs ± 1:05). There was also a statistically significant (p<0.05) difference between the refractory periods of females mated to irradiated vs. non-irradiated Cast 191 males, indicating that the irradiation process can affect the refractory period. It is expected that the methodology utilized in this study to analyze remating behavior of females could result in a useful monitoring procedure for quality control tests on mass-reared medfly strains.