Novel male attractants to collect material for next generation national fruit fly diagnostics and handbook

Abstract

This project is revising diagnostic tools for all high-priority Dacini fruit fly species in the National Fruit Fly Strategy and their non-pest relatives including offshore and Australian endemics. This will include developing a suite of tailor-made molecular diagnostic tools which will be integrated with morphological and biological data. To facilitate this, fresh material is being collected in Australia, Asia and the Pacific using male lure traps. As the male lures cue-lure and methyl eugenol are only effective in trapping approximately 50% of all fruit fly species, other lures are needed to collect non-responsive
taxa or those with a weak response to these lures. In Australia zingerone and eugenol analogues were found to be attractive to several species that had not previously been recorded at male lures and were more attractive to some cue- and ME-responsive species. Melolure was found to be a
stronger attractant for several cue-responsive species. Integrating these lures into this project has been important in enabling more complete collections for diagnostic and taxonomic studies.