By Todd Silver
With their insatiable hunger for succulent fruits and vegetables, fruit flies from the Tephritidae family are the bane of farmers and consumers alike. But recent ARS findings suggest that wind could play a major factor in surveillance, containment, and eradication of this destructive pest. Advanced technology in tracking the effects of wind dispersal on tiny, winged creatures in the wild promises to refine fruit fly management strategies, identify outbreak sources, and help scientists anticipate their movement, feeding, and mating patterns.
Several fruit flies from the Tephritidae fruit fly family are invasive to the U.S. and combine to cause millions, and during some seasons billions, in crop losses to American farmers. Beyond direct damage and control costs, if these pests were to become established on the U.S. mainland, they would become major barriers to international trade and prevent U.S. farmers from exporting to many of our trading partners.
The key to managing these pests is to understand their flying behaviors. Matthew Siderhurst recognized and addressed the complexity of tracing flies and deciphering wind-based patterns and now leads a team of scientists at the Daniel K. Inouye U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center in Hilo, HI, where their research will empower American farmers to protect their crops and reduce food waste. Groundbreaking research published in Environmental Entomology explains that harmonic radar tagging, initially developed for locating avalanche victims, can be used to study these fly pests. The method uses reflector tags that require no energy source of their own to bounce a signal back to a transceiver to map movement data.