The Interactive Effects of Colour and Odour on Drosophila melanogaster Trap Design for Pest Control Applications

Authors

  • Komal Adeel
  • Heather Hatch
  • Evgenia Momchilova
  • Kevin Lam
  • Kirsten Wilcox

Abstract

Drosophila species cause widespread agricultural damage, and designing effective traps for pest control requires an understanding of multimodal cues. Prior studies have looked at the effects of colour and odour on trap efficacy separately, but few have looked at the combined effects of these two types of stimuli. We tested the effect of multimodal cues on Drosophila melanogaster trap efficacy by setting up colour versus white two-choice tests for both banana-baited traps and odourless traps. While colour had no significant impact on banana-baited trap efficacy, red odourless traps were significantly more effective than white odourless traps at capturing D. melanogaster females. This suggests that though colour effects female D. melanogaster choice-making, in the presence of an attractive odour, colour becomes a less important stimulus in the choice-making process. Additionally, both odourous and odourless traps were more effective at capturing females than males, which indicates that these traps do not necessarily target males and females equally, and that pest control strategies need to be designed accordingly.

Published

2018-09-07