Drosophila suzukii is an invasive polyphagous pest of wild and cultivated soft‐skinned fruits, which can cause widespread economic damage in orchards and vineyards. The simulation and prediction of D. suzukii's population dynamics would be helpful for guiding pest management. Therefore, we reviewed and summarized the current knowledge on effects of air temperature and relative humidity on different life cycle parameters of D. suzukii. The literature summary presented shows that high oviposition rates can occur between 18 and 30 °C. Temperatures between 16 and 25 °C resulted in fast and high egg‐to‐adult development success of more than 80%. Oviposition and adult life span were positively affected by high relative humidity; however, the factor humidity is so far rarely investigated. We assume that this is one reason why relative humidity usually is not considered in modelling approaches, which are summarized herein. The high number of recently published research articles on D. suzukii's life cycle suggests that there is already a lot of knowledge available on its biology. However, there are still considerable research gaps mentioned in the literature, which are also summarized herein. Nevertheless, we conclude that sufficient temperature data in the literature are suitable to understand and predict population dynamics of D. suzukii, in order to assist pest management in the field.

As a result of increasing cultivation of corn and potatoes, the polyphagous larvae of the click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae), called wireworms, become a problem in agriculture (Parker and Howard 2001). The hypothesis that the vertical distribution of wireworms depends on soil moisture, soil temperature and soil type had to be verified. In field experiments, investigations on wireworm activity in relation to soil moisture and soil temperature were carried out over a period of 2 years. Bait traps were buried in soil, and the appearance of larvae was recorded during the seasons. In laboratory, the optimum soil moisture for larvae was tested with four soil types. Correlations between the percentage of observed wireworms and soil moisture were analysed. The results were taken as the basis for the prediction model SIMAGRIO‐W (SIMulation of the larvae of AGRIOtes (Wireworms)), which appraises the risk of damages on field culture caused by wireworms in relation to soil moisture and soil temperature. With logistic and Gaussian regressions, a first approach of a prediction model was developed. One output of the model displays the risk for damages in form of a binary response, which identifies two risk classes (risk and no risk). A second output displays for four soil types the percentage of appeared wireworms in relation to soil moisture, starting with an undefined amount of wireworms on a field. With a R² from 0.81 to 0.89, the percentage of occurred wireworms could be calculated well. The correlations were significant in all tested soil types (P ≤ 0.05). With data collected in 2010 and 2011, an independent validation was carried out to get information about the predictions quality of the developed model SIMAGRIO‐W. The hit rate was validated within two classes, risk and no risk. With correct results in over 85% of the cases, the class was predicted correctly.

Visceral sensory afferents during disease or following injury often produce vague, diffuse body sensations and pain referred to somatic targets. Alternatively, injury due to trauma or disease of somatic nerve targets can also lead to referred pain in visceral targets via a somatovisceral reflex. Both phenomenons are thought to be due to convergence of visceral and somatic afferents within the spinal cord. To investigate a potential peripheral influence for referred pain in visceral targets following somatic nerve injury, we examined whether a sciatic nerve injury known to produce known to produce hindpaw tactile hyperalgesia alters the frequency of micturition and the sensitivity of bladder-associated sensory neurons to pro-nociceptive chemokines. Adult female Sprague-Dawley rats received injections of cholera toxin b subunit conjugated to 555 into urinary bladder wall to retrogradely label visceral primary afferent neurons. Seven days later, the right sciatic nerve of these animals was subjected to a lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC)-induced focal demyelination injury. Pre- and post-injury tactile sensitivity in the hind paw and micturition frequency were assayed. Animals were allowed to survive for 14–28 days. Lumbosacral and lumbar dorsal root ganglia (DRG) ipsilateral to the nerve injury were acutely dissociated from sham and nerve injured animals. Bladder wall-associated sensory neurons identified via the retrograde marker were assayed for fluxes in intracellular calcium following administration of pro-nociceptive chemokines. The assayed chemokines included monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP1/CCL2) and stromal cell derived factor-1 alpha (SDF1/CXCL12). LPC nerve injured animals exhibited tactile hyperalgesia and increased micturition frequency for at least 28 days. Focal demyelination of the sciatic nerve also increased the number of injured L4L5 and non-injured L6-S2 bladder-associated sensory neurons that responded to MCP1 and SDF1 when compared with sensory neurons derived from uninjured naïve and sham-injured control animals. Taken together, this data suggests that some visceral hypersensitivity states may have a somatic origin. More importantly, nociceptive somatovisceral sensation may be mediated by upregulation of chemokine signaling in visceral sensory neurons.

Drosophila suzukii is an invasive, polyphagous pest of soft-skinned fruits, having huge impact on fruit production in Asia, North and South America and Europe including Germany. 2 To investigate the effect of temperature on oviposition, egg-to-adult development success and duration, as well as immature heat survival and adult cold survival for a German D. suzukii population several experiments were conducted under different constant temperatures in the laboratory. The resulting life cycle data were described mathematically as functions of temperature and compared with experimental results of other researchers in a summary table. 3 Curve fittings used herein revealed that minimum, optimum and maximum temperatures are: 13.2, 26.7 and 33.6 ∘ C for oviposition, 14.1, 22.6 and 30.0 ∘ C for egg-to-adult development success, and 9.6, 27.3 and 35.7 ∘ C for egg-to-adult development duration. Eggs and larvae of D. suzukii showed a reduced heat survival within the tested temperature range of 29 to 41 ∘ C and exposure durations from 1 to 8 h. A cold survival rate of 50% was measured at e.g. −6 ∘ C for 4 h in summer morph adults and at e.g. −6 ∘ C for 45 h in winter morph adults confirming that the latter are more cold tolerant. 4 Results obtained in this study for a German population of D. suzukii are similar to those obtained for populations of other origins such as Canada, Japan, Spain and USA. Thus, presumably, present data based on a German D. suzukii population can be used for a new or fine-tune of already existing population dynamics models of D. suzukii in order to support an effective pest management strategy.

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