A flight cylinder bioassay as a simple, effective quality control test for Cydia pomonella

Abstract

Assessment of quality of the sterile male insects that are being mass‐reared for release in area‐wide integrated pest management programmes that include a sterile insect technique component is crucial for the success of these programmes. Routine monitoring of sterile male quality needs to be carried out both in the mass‐rearing facility and in the field. Simple bioassays that can be conducted in the laboratory and that would be surrogates for laborious field tests would be a very cost‐effective way of monitoring sterile male field performance. Simple flight cylinders were used to assess whether these could detect differences in quality of male codling moth Cydia pomonella. The number of male and female codling moths that flew out of the cylinders was influenced by cylinder diameter, cylinder height and number of hours following the initiation of the test. The flight cylinder bioassay was capable of detecting differences in quality of codling moths induced by irradiation when moths were shipped, but no differences were found in flight ability when the moths were not transported. The tests also confirmed that handling and shipment reduced quality more for irradiated than for non‐treated codling moth, and that insect quality was significantly influenced by larval rearing protocols. The flight cylinder bioassay was therefore successful in detecting differences in codling moth quality induced by various treatments that had been identified previously by more complex laboratory bioassays and field trials. Treatment differences were most likely detected when flight cylinders were 16 cm high.

Comparison of laboratory and field bioassays of laboratory‐reared Cydia pomonella (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) quality and field performance

“…Therefore, bioassays for mobility, flight propensity and flight ability should be fundamental to monitoring the performance of sterile moths released in the field (Carpenter et al. ). Actographs (Keil et al.…”

Modeling the Sterile Insect Technique for Suppression of Light Brown Apple Moth (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)

“…Even a short duration temperature shock has been known to affect the quality of sterile insects (Dominiak et al 2007;Dominiak et al 2014). Carpenter et al (2012) found that irradiated codling moths were more likely to be of lower quality than non-irradiated after handling during transport. Gutierrez et al (2010) demonstrated that the lower and upper threshold for all LBAM development stages was between 6.8 and 31.3 °C.…”

“…An automated system of testing single moths in behavioral assays would be desirable to advance automation of moth quality assessment. While simple and affordable bioassays have been developed to assess the quality of sterilized insects (Carpenter et al 2012), the bioassay presented here using the LAM system demonstrates that 32 individual insects can be assessed (or many more as more modules are added) in a matter of min for each run.…”

“…Mating competitiveness is significantly reduced by irradiation in Lepidoptera, and adverse effects have been shown on males of C. pomonella (Carpenter et al 2012;Carpenter et al 2013) and both male and female LBAM Stringer et al 2013). Wind tunnel assessment of changes in moth flight ability after irradiation has been done on species in 2 families of Lepidoptera (Suckling et al 2005;Suckling et al 2007a).…”

“…Many authors have used simple activity measures for flies, such as flight ability out of a cylinder, but this approach may have limitations for moths. Carpenter et al (2012) described a very cost-effective and simple bioassay for assessing the quality of sterilized codling moths for both field and laboratory by counting the number of released moths that have flown from a cylinder over a period of around 3 days. While this assay is effective and affordable, it does come at the expense of time.…”