Canadian Entomology – Page 6 – Entomological Society of Canada

ESC Students Entered in NSERC-CRSNG Video Contest

Two student members of the Entomological Society of Canada have videos entered in the NSERC-CRSNG Science, Action! competition. The contest, open to students across Canada, aims to share NSERC-CRSNG funded research through 60 second videos, and offers a cash prize of $3,000 to the winning entries. The first round of public voting is now open, and both students would appreciate your support by viewing and sharing their entries, helping highlight entomology research in Canada.

Michael Hrabar, MSc Student at Simon Fraser University

Bed bugs have become a global epidemic. Detecting infestations early is the key to successful eradication. Scientists at Simon Fraser University have identified the bed bug aggregation pheromone. They extracted the pheromone from the bugs’ feces and cast cuticle, and analyzed extracts by state-of-the-art technology including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In lab and field bioassays, they demonstrated that a 6-component pheromone blend is highly effective in attracting bed bugs to, and retaining them in, cardboard shelter traps. The pheromone technology can now be developed as a tool to help detect, and possibly control, bed bug infestations.

https://youtu.be/xRsh-hInyR0

Morgan Jackson*, PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph

Flies, two-winged insects in the order Diptera, are an important and understudied component of Canada’s biodiversity. With nearly 8,000 species known from Canada, and likely as many more still to be discovered, flies impact our lives every day, either as pests and disease vectors, or as pollinators, decomposers and in many other ways. At the University of Guelph Insect Collection, we’re working to understand the diversity of flies from coast to coast and beyond our borders by studying their natural history and taxonomy using comparative morphology and DNA. By combining fieldwork with museum-based research, we’re helping catalog Canada’s dipteran diversity.

https://youtu.be/BBWC3quX_vk

*Disclaimer: Morgan Jackson is an administrator of the ESC Blog.

13 mars 2015/par Morgan Jackson

Academic, Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog, Research

Canadian Entomology Research Roundup: January 2015 – March 2015

As a graduate student, publishing a paper is a big deal. After spending countless hours doing the research, slogging through the writing process, soliciting comments from co-authors, formatting the paper to meet journal guidelines, and dealing with reviewer comments, it’s nice to finally get that acceptance letter and know that your work is getting out there.

We are continuing to help publicize graduate student publications to the wider entomological community through our Research Roundup. The ESC Student Affairs Committee is happy to be posting a second roundup of papers authored by Canadian graduate students. If you published an article recently and would like it featured, e-mail us at entsoccan.students@gmail.com.

For regular updates on new Canadian entomological research, you can join the ESC Students Facebook page or follow us on Twitter @esc_students.

So, what’s hot off the press, you ask? Here’s what some entomology grad students have been up to between 31 January 2015 and 4 March 2015:

Systematics and Morphology

Piophilidae is an important family of flies to forensic entomology: their occurrence on a corpse can help determine post-mortem interval and assist legal investigations. Sabrina Rochefort (McGill University) and colleagues provide an updated key to the forensically pertinent Piophilidae in the Nearctic Region. Article link

Job Opening – Entomology Curator, Royal British Columbia Museum

After an outpouring of support from the Canadian entomological community, the Royal British Columbia Museum has decided to hire a new Curator of Entomology!

The competition for the Curator of Entomology position at the Royal BC Museum is now posted at http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/assets/Posting3.pdf. Deadline for applications has been extended to 24 March.

3 mars 2015/par Blog

Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog, Meetings, Societé d’Entomologie du Québec

Announcement – ESC-SEQ JAM 2015!

The Entomological Society of Canada and the Société d’entomologie du Québec are pleased to invite the entomological community to the 2015 Joint Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec. The conference will take place from 8^th to 11^th November, and includes a range of symposia and associated events under the meeting’s theme : Entomology in the Anthropocene.

The plenary symposium is designed to provide a provocative overview of the challenges related to entomology in the Anthropocene. Plenary speakers include Dr. May Berenbaum (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Dr. Jessica Hellmann (University of Notre Dame), and Dr. Marcel Dicke (Wageningen University).

The Entomological Society of Canada and the Société d’Entomologie du Québec invite proposals for symposium sessions at the 2015 Joint Annual Meeting (JAM). We invite timely and well organised submissions from across the breadth of entomological science. We are particularly enthusiastic about symposia that are aligned with our 2015 meeting theme “Insects in the Anthropocene.” Deadline for symposium submission is the 28^th February. See the webpage Call for symposia.

Sunday Nov. 8th, 7-10pm; Eat, drink and mingle with new and old friends at the ESC-ESS JAM Opening Reception at the Montréal Insectarium. Entomophagous appetizers will be served.

For more information, please visit our website, join us on Facebook and on Twitter using the hashtag #ESCJAM2015.

19 février 2015/par Blog

Academic, Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog

Canadian Entomology Research Roundup: December 2014 – January 2015

We want to help publicize graduate student publications to the wider entomological community. Every month or so, the ESC Student Affairs Committee will post a roundup of papers authored by Canadian graduate students.

We don’t anticipate that these lists will be comprehensive (alas, Google Scholar alerts aren’t perfect), but should give a nice ‘taste’ of student entomological research in Canada. If you want your recently published article featured (or we missed yours last month!), send us an email at entsoccan.students@gmail.com

For regular updates on new Canadian entomological research, you can join the ESC Students Facebook page or follow us on Twitter @esc_students.

Without further delay, here’s what entomology grad students have been up to lately (articles published online between December 1, 2014 and January 18, 2015):

Behaviour and Physiology

Miruna Draguleasa (University of Toronto) and colleagues found that apparently bumblebees love caffeine just like many sleep-deprived grad students.

Two students, Carling Baxter and Rachael Barnett, and their colleagues at McMaster University found that male fruit flies become less choosy when selecting mates as they age.

Older male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are less choosy. Photo by André Karwath aka Aka (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Laura Sedra and colleagues at the University of Toronto Mississagua investigated how blood-feeding assassin bugs (Rhodnius prolixus) control their oviduct contractions

Laura Ferguson (University of Western Ontario) helped to determine that modifications of ion balance mediate cold tolerance in Drosophila.

The downside of being a sexy male tree cricket? You might not live very long. Kyla Ercit (University of Toronto Mississauga) and colleagues found that male Oecanthus nigricornis individuals with wide heads and small legs were most attractive, but individuals with narrow heads, large legs, and intermediate pronotum length were most likely to survive.

Rosemarie Vallières (Université Laval) and colleagues found that metabolism and winter survival of temperate hemlock looper populations in Québec will be more affected by fall heat waves (compared to boreal populations), which are increasing in frequency due to climate change.

Hemlock looper adult. Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Meet Zandawala and Zina Hamoudi (University of Toronto Mississauga) confirmed the identification of the adipokinetic hormone receptor in Rhodnius prolixus. The hormone is known to mobilize lipids, carbohydrates and proline for energy consuming activities.

New research by Fanny Maure (Université de Montréal) found that ladybirds can survive (and even reproduce!!) after parasitism and behavioural manipulation by a wasp. Featured on the cover of the November 2014 issue of National Geographic Magazine, and discussed in a fantastic accompanying article by Carl Zimmer.

Does the Earth’s magnetic field serve as a reference for alignment of the honeybee waggle dance? Short answer: At least local (ambient) geomagnetic field does not act as the reference for the alignment of waggle-dancing bees. Read more on the research conducted by Veronica Lambient and colleagues at Simon Fraser University here.

Ecology

A recent study by Dorothy Maguire (McGill) and colleagues in a Quebec forest ecosystem finds strong top-down effects of predators on arthropods, but weak effects of fragmentation on predation and herbivory levels.

Students from McGill’s Buddle Lab collecting insects using a beat sheet, sampling bird exclosures, and measuring damage on leaves. Photos courtesy of Dorothy Macguire.

Guillaume Sainte-Marie (Université du Québec à Montréal) and colleagues found that promoting hardwoods does not appear to reduce spruce defoliation during outbreaks of spruce budworm.

Crisia Tabacaru (University of Alberta) and colleagues determined that competitors and natural enemies may help prevent establishment of mountain pine beetle after fires.

Gun Koleoglu and Tatiana Petukhova (University of Guelph) found that Africanized honey bees may have higher viral resistance than European honey bees following parasitism by Varroa mites.

Researchers at the University of Alberta, including Devin Goodsman, found that the interactions between a lepidopteran defoliator and a bark beetle shifted from facilitative to competitive depending on outbreak severity.

Sean McCann and Catherine Scott (Simon Fraser University) discovered that the red-throated caracara rivals the predatory impact of army ants on some populations of Neotropical social wasps.

Genetics

A new molecular marker for phylogeographic and population studies of the black-legged tick has been identified by Chantal Krakowetz (University of Saskatchewan) and colleagues. And in a follow-up study, the mitochondrial gene variation could point to origins of tick populations in the United States and the potential risk for Canada.

A deer tick, Ixodes scapularis. Photo Credit : Jim Gathany [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

At York University Daria Molodtsova and Brock Harpur, together with colleagues, linked genetic mutations in a transcriptional network to the evolution of complex behaviours in honey bees.

Pest Management and Biological control

Two studies conducted at the Université de Montréal by Julie Faucher-Deslile and colleagues found protein content is not the only factor important in selecting diet supplements for predatory mites and that supplementing predatory mite applications with apple pollen may increase the control of thrips in greenhouses.

Insects used in modern weed biological control programs are highly host-specific to their target weed, but can sometimes exhibit ‘spillover’ herbivory on related nontarget plants. Determining where and why spillover occurs can help us predict its potential to negatively affect native plant populations. Here, Haley Catton (UBC Okanagan) and colleagues used two field experiments to show that a controversial biocontrol weevil exhibits spillover when at high density, but does not find or feed on nontarget plants even a few metres from release points. This is good news, as the more localized the spillover, the lower the chance of negative population-level impacts to nontarget plants.

<i>Mogulones crucifer </i>biocontrol weevils painted for a mark-release-recapture experiment involving target and nontarget host finding.

Mogulones crucifer biocontrol weevils painted for a mark-release-recapture experiment involving target and nontarget host finding. Image by Haley Catton.

Christine Miluch (University of Alberta) and colleagues looked at how to maximize the attractiveness of pheromone traps to diamondback moth males in canola.

An interesting study conducted by Simon P. W. Zappia and Amber Gigi Hoi found that regardless of how energy-deprived they are, DEET will keep mosquitos off your stinky socks!

A Canadian research team from Simon Fraser University, including graduate students Michel Holmes and Jason Draper, has identified the bed bug aggregation pheromone! The discovery was featured at several media outlets, including « Wired ».

A female bed bug. By Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium (Cimex lectularius (bed bug)) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Until next time!

The ESC Student Affairs Committee

5 février 2015/par escstudents

Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog, Research Blogging, Students, The Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification

Exploring piophilid flies: taxonomic tools for forensic entomology

By Sabrina Rochefort, MSc student, McGill University.

Early in my undergraduate program at McGill University, I was looking for an opportunity to volunteer in a lab, where I could feed my need to learn and make new discoveries. That led me to Terry Wheeler’s lab; he was the teacher for my evolution class at that time.

I had a strong interest in evolution and paleontology, and was hoping to pursue that field. But Terry informed me that volunteering in his lab did not involve studying fossils, but instead studying tiny insects. Curious and willing to learn about insects, I decided to give it a try! At the Lyman Museum, I quickly discovered that entomology is a field of study with great opportunities and with an infinite number of projects. Besides studying for my degree, and working on weekends at Tim Hortons, I was volunteering up to 12 hours a week, between and after classes, pinning flies and identifying them. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore, I had developed a strong passion for entomology!

Identifying flies at the Lyman Museum. Photo by E. Vajda

Volunteering gradually transformed into a student job. It’s then that Terry introduced me to the fly family Piophilidae, commonly known as the Skipper Flies. I spent numerous hours familiarising myself with piophilids, reading literature, learning to identify them, their ecology, etc. All that knowledge that I acquired in entomology during my undergraduate studies gave me a great opportunity: the chance to pursue graduate studies. I am presently undertaking a Master’s project on the taxonomy and phylogeny of Piophilidae.

Collecting piophilids on decaying mushrooms in the Yukon. Photo by E. Vajda

Now, let’s put a little less attention on my background and a little more on this wonderful family of flies and my project!

Piophilids are small to medium flies (3 to 9mm), which are abundant and diverse, especially in the northern hemisphere. To date, there are 82 described species worldwide. They mainly feed and reproduce on decaying organic matter. This family is of interest in several scientific domains such as forensic entomology (for their presence on carrion), in behavior (for their unique sexual selection strategies) and in biodiversity (for their interesting geographic distribution in the arctic). Several species are also pests in the food industry. The study of their taxonomy and phylogeny is essential for several reasons: to be able to identify specimens found in studies; to document the geographic distribution of species; to establish their phylogenetic relationships; and to learn more about their biology and ecology. The main objectives of my thesis are a taxonomic revision of the Nearctic Piophilidae and phylogenetic analysis of the genera worldwide.

Liopiophila varipes, a piophilid species commonly found on carrion. Photo by S. Rochefort

A statement that is often repeated in our lab is that it is important for taxonomists and ecologists to collaborate, and that the outcomes of our taxonomic projects should be useful not only for taxonomists but also to other entomologists in other fields of expertise. And that is right! For taxonomy to make sense, it is essential that other researchers be able to understand it and use our work. This can be done by providing them with “working tools” such as identification keys which are simple and adapted to a specific need. It is for that reason that, as a side project to my thesis, I decided to collaborate with Marjolaine Giroux, from the Montreal Insectarium, Jade Savage from Bishop’s University and my supervisor Terry Wheeler on a publication and key to the Piophilidae species that may be found in forensic entomology studies in North America. That paper has just been published in the Canadian Journal of Arthropod identification. We reviewed some of the problems associated with identification of piophilids, and the need to develop a user-friendly key to the species. We wanted to create a key with lots of photographs, that was user-friendly and simple for non-specialists, and that would be published on-line and open access. Because of this, CJAI was the ideal journal for our paper.

Seeing this publication completed early in my graduate studies is a great accomplishment for me. It gave me the opportunity to share my knowledge and make taxonomy more accessible to students, amateur entomologists and researchers in the academic and scientific community. Undertaking a project in a less familiar field which is linked to your expertise is a very gratifying experience which I strongly encourage other students to try. From this experience, I acquired new skills and knowledge, I made connections with researchers in other fields of study and I was able to make more connections between my Master’s thesis and other subjects in entomology.

Reference

Rochefort, S., Giroux, M., Savage, J., Wheeler, T.A. 2015. Key to Forensically Important Piophilidae (Diptera) in the Nearctic Region. Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification No. 27: January 22, 2015. Available online

23 janvier 2015/par Blog

Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog, Meetings

Bringing Canada to the International Congress of Entomology 2016

Call for an ESC symposium at the International Congress of Entomology in Orlando 2016

The ESC Ad Hoc Committee for the International Congress of Entomology, chaired by Murray Isman, is inviting proposals for a Canadian-focussed symposium at ICE. This should be a showcase for an area of entomology in which Canada has a special strength but which would also be of interest to an international audience. Symposium submissions should fit into one of the section topics for ICE, and are due by March 2 2015. Details of the information needed to submit a Symposium proposal can be found at http://ice2016orlando.org/preview-symposium/. Anyone wishing to submit a proposal should contact the Secretary, Alec McClay at secretary@esc-sec.ca, as soon as possible, with details of their proposed topic area and potential speakers. The Executive will review proposals and select one to be developed for submission. Some financial support may be available from ESC for the selected symposium. You can also advise us if you have already submitted a symposium proposal and wish to have it considered as the ESC symposium.

Appel à soumission pour un symposium de la SEC au Congrès international d’entomologie (ICE) 2016 à Orlando

Le comité Ad Hoc de la SEC pour l’ICE, présidé par Murray Isman, invite les soumissions pour un symposium d’intérêt canadien à l’ICE. Il s’agira d’une vitrine pour un domaine de l’entomologie dans lequel le Canada est spécialement fort, mais qui pourrait être d’intérêt pour une audience internationale. Les soumissions de symposium devraient pouvoir être liées à un des thèmes de l’ICE, et sont attendues pour le 2 mars 2015. Les détails sur l’information requise pour soumettre une proposition de symposium se trouvent sur http://ice2016orlando.org/preview-symposium/. Toute personne désirant soumettre une proposition doit contacter le secrétaire, Alec McClay, à secretary@esc-sec.ca, le plus tôt possible, avec les détails du sujet proposé et les conférenciers potentiels. Le conseil exécutif va réviser les propositions et en sélectionner une qui sera développée pour être soumise. Un soutien financier pourrait être disponible de la SEC pour le symposium choisi. Vous pouvez également nous aviser si vous avez déjà soumis une proposition de symposium et que vous voudriez qu’elle soit considérée pour le symposium de la SEC.

Alec McClay, Ph.D.
Secretary, Entomological Society of Canada

16 janvier 2015/par Blog

Canadian Entomology, Collections/Museums, ESC Blog

Royal BC Museum insect curator position in danger, but you can make a difference

Only half of an estimated 35, 000 insects in BC have been recorded. A curator is urgently needed to address research priorities for BC’s most diverse group of organisms. Photo by Miles Zhang.

The following is a guest post by Professor Felix Sperling

I’m always amazed when I see a well-established natural history museum that doesn’t have entomology curators. What are their administrators thinking? Insects form half of the known species diversity of our planet, a fundamental fact that too many people are unaware of. The ecological and even economic impact of all those species is overwhelming across all terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, which are of course the habitats that we occupy ourselves. And there is still a shocking amount of insect biodiversity left undocumented or misunderstood, lying in wait to bite us, literally and figuratively, just when we are unprepared to deal with it.

Over 16, 000 RBCM Entomology specimens have been loaned out in the past 5 years alone. Photo: S. McCann.

But that is just the surface. The study of insects is an indispensable portal to understanding life on our planet and therefore to knowing ourselves and our place in this world. An appreciation of the exuberant diversity of insects is an essential foundation from which to build a fully connected and integrated appreciation of our surroundings, and to understanding the diversity and vitality of our interactions. That connectedness is what modern museums strive to capture and present. An entomology curator is the nexus for such connections, serving to do so very much more than just assembling specimens. An entomology curator is responsible for half of all known biological diversity, which also means curation of half of our knowledge about diversity, a human construct that is vulnerable to extinction just like a language is. And more than a purely cultural construct, such a curator maintains the chain that ties the dynamic memory of a human community to the material reality that allows the people of our planet to thrive. So how can a serious museum do without one, especially in a region where biodiversity is important to the self image of a people and insect biodiversity professionals are already so few in number?

So I was seriously puzzled to hear that the CEO of the Royal British Columbia Museum, Professor Jack Lohman, is seriously considering redirecting their entomology curator salary line, which was vacated when Dr. Rob Cannings retired in 2012. But I hear that there is still time for us all to have some input into the process, since Lohman has agreed to discuss the issue one last time on January 22^nd, and has asked for a demonstration of support for such a position from outside the museum by that date.

Curatorial oversight leads to enhanced public engagement, fulfilling the core mission of a public museum. Photo by Miles Zhang.

I hope that as many of you as possible can write a short letter to Professor Lohman to point out the importance of entomology in the context of the Royal British Columbia Museum and the broader community that it is part of. Letters from a diversity of backgrounds and institutions would be most helpful. Some of you will have already heard about this via emails that circulated just before the holiday break, and here is an information sheet that may help you to make the case. You can get a better sense of Professor Lohman’s vision and background here.

Letters on institutional letterhead would be best, and can be sent to:

Prof. Jack Lohman, Chief Executive Officer

Royal British Columbia Museum

675 Belleville St,

Victoria, BC V8W 9W2

JLohman@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca

And send a copy to:

Peter Ord: Vice President, Archives, Collections, and Knowledge

POrd@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca

My deepest appreciation to all of you who have read this far, and especially to any of you who can send off a letter, however brief. May you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous year in 2015!

The Royal BC Museum houses over 600,000 entomological specimens. Photo: S. McCann.

6 janvier 2015/par Blog

Canadian Entomology, ESC Blog, Natural History

The brief lives and loves of male strepsipterans

This wasp has a problem! Three relatively enormous parasitic strepsipterans are occupying her abdomen…Photo by Sean McCann.

Who wouldn’t want to get to know the Strepsiptera? These animals are extremely odd, being obligate endoparasites of other insects, with a free-flying male and an eyeless, wingless female that never leaves the abdomen of her host. Different families of these parasites infect different hosts, ranging from silverfish and cockroaches to solitary and social wasps, leafhoppers, and froghoppers.

Allow me to introduce Xenos peckii, a strepsipteran parasite of Polistes fuscatus, the Northern Paper Wasp. As an entomologist, I have long been interested in these little-studied insects, so I was thrilled to get to help my colleague Mike Hrabar in his investigation their life history and reproduction.

Mike collected a several colonies of infected wasps from Maine and brought them back to the lab to observe their emergence, flight and mating behaviour in a systematic way. We used high speed videography and careful record keeping to document their life history in closer detail than had ever previously been recorded.

Not really bling. This wasp sports a heavy infestation of four developing Xenos, costing vast amounts of resources. Photo by Sean McCann.

From my perspective, one of the coolest things we learned is that the free-flying male opens his puparium by means of blade-like mandibles, which are used to cut along a zone of weakness in the pupal cap, functioning like a tiny can opener!

Head of male Xenos peckii. Note the scissor-like mandibles and the large and unusual compound eyes. Photo by Mike Hrabar. Figure 3G from Hrabar et al. 2014.

Check out the video below to see the male’s little mandibles working the cap open.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCeEsXVNiOY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

These little troopers fly immediately upon emergence, in stark contrast with most other insects, which need time to inflate and harden their wings. In fact, once the males begin beating their wings, they remain in flight continuously except for a brief period during mating.

Before our study, biologists had assumed that female Strepsiptera were completely immobile and passively waited for males to find them, but we observed that they move to adopt a distinct calling posture, elevating their cephalothorax up from the wasp’s abdomen, likely emitting a pheromone plume.

Female Xenos peckii in the abdomen of a Polistes fuscatus. This female is in the calling posture, elevating her cephalothorax. Photo by Mike Hrabar. Figure 4D from Hrabar et al. 2014.

The males smell this pheromone plume and fly toward it rapidly, in a zig-zag fashion reminiscent of pheromone-questing moths. As soon as a male reaches the female-infected host, he lands on her abdomen and walks down to where the female protrudes, using backwards steps with his heavily-modified tarsi.

Mid leg of Xenos peckii male. The tarsi are highly modified for gaining a strong grip on a wasp abdomen while searching for and mating with a female. Figure 8 from Hrabar et al. 2014.

Mating occurs rapidly, with typical copulation time being 3-5 seconds. As soon as mating is finished, the male is once again in flight, presumably in search of another female. After copulation, the female immediately withdraws from the calling posture and ceases calling other males. The following video was taken at 1000 frames/second with a high-speed video camera and shows the sequence from just after landing by the male through the majority of copulation.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPiG8AV0XWY?rel=0&w=560&h=420]

This male Polistes fuscatus was weakening, and died while we were watching. Mike pinned the host, and we forgot about it for a while, until glancing at it we realized that one of the males was emerging! This shot was snatched quickly while the male had just popped off his cephalotheca. Photo by Sean McCann, Figure 2E from Hrabar et al. 2014.

We have shown that female Xenos are not just a passive receptacle or bag of eggs, but rather play a physically active role in soliciting mates. The male emergence is facilitated by using sharp mandibles to cut around an ecdysial suture line, and navigating the surface of his prospective mates host is aided by his extremely modified tarsi.

The short-lived males face a great challenge to locate and fly to a host with a calling female in the short amount of time they live (on average 2-2.5 hours). They are in constant flight from emergence until death with only a very short pause for mating. The female, by contrast, remains alive in her host, maturing a brood of eggs which she retains in her body until they hatch and crawl from her brood canal as motile planidial larvae.

These larvae will exit the brood canal at some point, but it is unclear exactly where they manage to find new hosts. It is possible they « deplane » at flowers and wait for a ride on a Polistes to a new nest of victims. Much more research will need to happen to fully understand these fascinating insects, but we have made a start at uncovering some of the mysteries of their emergence, communication and reproduction. Many more questions remain unanswered and provide opportunities for any natural historian to explore.

If you would like to read the whole paper, you can find it on the Canadian Entomologist site here, or if you are not a subscriber, I am hosting a corrected proof here.

The full citation for this paper is:

HRABAR, M., DANCI, A., MCCANN, S., SCHAEFER, P. W., and GRIES, G. 2014. New findings on life history traits of Xenos peckii (Strepsiptera: Xenidae). The Canadian Entomologist doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4039/tce.2013.85 pp.1–14.

11 mars 2014/par Sean McCann

Academic, Canadian Entomology, Economic Entomology, Entomological Society of Ontario, ESC Blog, Research Blogging

African fig fly shows up in Canada: first occurrences of another fruit-infesting fly and potential pest.

By Justin Renkema, Post-Doc, University of Guelph

—–

It was an early morning after a long drive from Guelph to a small fruit farm in Chatham-Kent where my undergraduate student, Caitlyn, and I were conducting a small-plot spray trial to test the effect s of repellents against Drosophila suzukii (Spotted Wing Drosophila), a recent invasive and serious fruit pest. I knew the raspberry patch was heavily infested with D. suzukii so before getting to work, to amuse ourselves at the start of the day, I started gently shaking canes, and we watched the swarms of fruit flies disperse and hover over the fresh fruit. However, as I went to grab a branch low to the ground, I noticed something different about one of the fruit flies sitting on a leaf. It had characteristic white “racing stripes” along its thorax, unlike any other fruit fly I had seen. This was it! This was very likely Zaprionus indianus or African fig fly, another invasive and potential fruit pest that we knew was moving northwards from the southeastern USA. Caitlyn grabbed a vial and we successfully had, on 10 September 2013, what we thought was the first capture of this fly in Ontario and Canada.

Zaprionis indianus photographed by Dr. Stephen Marshall in Africa. (Photo C Stephen A. Marshall, used with permission)

Indeed the fly was Z. indianus, as determined by Meredith Miller, a M.Sc. student at the University of Guelph working on taxonomy of Drosophila spp. in Ontario. Through contact with Hannah Fraser at Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, we learned that their Ontario-wide monitoring program for D. suzukii had also picked up some African fig flies in apple-cider vinegar traps, and a few at an earlier date than our find in Chatham-Kent. Colleagues in Quebec (Jean-Phillipe Légaré and others at MAPAQ) had also found what they believed were Z. indianus. Once all the material was collected and examined by Meredith, we submitted a scientific note documenting our Z. indianus discovery in Canada that was published by the Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario.

Zaprionus indianus is native to the Afrotropical region. It was found in Brazil in 1998 where it was given its common name because it became a significant pest of figs. In 2005, Z. indianus was discovered in Florida and has since been found successively further north and west in the USA (see a map of its distribution here). It is likely that the North American infestation did not come from the Brazilian population. Zaprionus indianus is the only member of Zaprionus present in Canada, and therefore the reddish-brown head and thorax and particularly the silvery stripes that extend from the antennae to the tip of scutellum can be used as distinguishing features.

Unlike D. suzukii (thankfully!), female Z. indianus do not possess heavily sclerotized and serrated ovipositors and are not currently seen as a serious threat to temperate fruit crops. They have been reared from a number of tropical, tree-ripened fruits in Florida and there is concern in vineyards in the eastern USA, where sometimes they outnumber D. suzukii in traps. It is possible that Z. indianus can use fruit that has been oviposited in by D. suzukii, thus increasing damage and possibly complicating control measures. In Canada, particularly Ontario and Quebec, winter temperatures may preclude establishment of African fig fly, and yearly re-infestation from the south would be necessary for it to show up in future years. At all but one site, we found just 1-4 flies during late summer and early fall per site, so it will be interesting to see what happens to numbers this coming growing season. In tropical and sub-tropical locations much larger populations have been detected the year following first detection.

For the past 1.5 years I have been working as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Guelph with Rebecca Hallett on D. suzukii. We are developing a push-pull management strategy using volatile plant compounds to repel and attract this pest. With the occurrence of Z. indianus and possible reoccurrence in larger numbers in the future, we may have a unique opportunity to study how two recent invaders using similar resources interact, and also, perhaps, a more significant challenge ahead of us in developing management strategies. If you are interested in this topic or have current or future experiences with Z. indianus, I and co-authors on the scientific note would appreciate hearing from you. You can contact me at renkemaj@uoguelph.ca.

—-

Renkema J.M., Miller M., Fraser H., Légaré J.P. & Hallett R.H. (2013). First records of Zaprionus indianus Gupta (Diptera: Drosophilidae) from commercial fruit fields in Ontario and Quebec, Canada, Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario, 144 125-130. OPEN ACCESS [PDF]

3 février 2014/par Blog