Fruit infestation patterns by Anastrepha fraterculus and Ceratitis capitata reveal that cross-recognition does not lead to complete avoidance of interspecific competition in nature

F. DEVESCOVI; M.C. LIENDO; G.E. BACHMANN; J.P. BOUVET; F.H. MILLA; M.T. VERA; J.L. CLADERA; D.F. SEGURA

AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST ENTOMOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2015

1461-9555

In Tephritidae fruit flies, the avoidance of fruit previously infested by conspecifics or heterospecifics has been studied mainly at the individuallevel. The role of this behaviour on the spatial distribution of offspring of competing species has been overlooked. In the present study, we used two analytical approaches to investigate the co-infestation patterns of Anastrepha fraterculus and Ceratitis capitata (Tephritidae), to unravel the importance of cross-species infestation recognition in nature. Guava fruit were sampled andindividually categorized as: non-infested, infested by one species or infested by both species. The frequency of each type of fruit was compared with frequency distributions expected under two models: an independent oviposition model and a competition avoidance model. Alternatively, co-occurrence patterns were evaluated using null models. Results showed that avoidance of competition could be occurring in nature but only in a few cases in which infestation levels are moderate. The spatial scale affected the resulting co-occurrence patterns, such that opposite behaviours towards infested fruit are inferred at the largest (mainly aggregated oviposition) versus the smallest scale (mainly independent oviposition). For this system, our findings suggest that the avoidance of infested fruit does not contribute, at least not strongly, to the coexistence of the two species.