Infestation of fruit by conspecific and heterospecific females deters oviposition in two Tephritidae fruit fly species

LIENDO, MARÍA CLARA; PARREÑO, MARÍA ALEJANDRA; PIETREK, ALEJANDRO G.; BOUVET, JUAN PEDRO; MILLA, FABIÁN H.; VERA, M. TERESA; CLADERA, JORGE L.; SEGURA, DIEGO F.

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2020

0931-2048

Tephritidae fruit fly larvae develop entirely in the host chosen by the females. Toimprove the fitness of their progeny, females would benefit from rejecting previouslyexploited hosts. Anastrepha fraterculus and Ceratitis capitata are two species offruit flies having similar nutritional requirements and overlapping in their distribution.Previous studies found that competition between the larvae of these species mightreach high levels, suggesting that cross-recognition would be an adaptive trait. Inthis work, we tested the ability of A. fraterculus and C. capitata females to recognizeand avoid fruits previously infested by both conspecific and heterospecific females.In laboratory behavioural arenas, females were presented with fruits that had beenpreviously exposed to either conspecific or heterospecific females. Then, we conductedchoice and non-choice assays to compare the response of A. fraterculus and C.capitata females to infested and non-infested fruits. In non-choice tests, the femalesfrom both species rejected fruits previously infested by conspecific and heterospecificindividuals. However, the rejection occurred at different steps of the sequenceleading to oviposition: A. fraterculus showed a lower rate of visits to infested fruits,whereas C. capitata visited both infested and non-infested fruits, but the latency tovisit a fruit and the rejection frequency were higher and the duration of the visit toinfested fruit was lower. In choice assays, the rejection of heterospecific infestedfruit was higher than that of conspecific infested fruits, for both species. Our resultssuggest that, regardless of the sensory mechanism used by females, the recognitionof previous infestation is bidirectional and females of both species, belonging to differentgenera, recognize fruit infested by heterospecifics. These responses indicatethat cross-recognition, supposedly a highly beneficial trait, could be occurring in nature,thus reducing interspecific competition and contributing to the coexistence ofthese species.