Modelling Drosophila suzukii Adult Male Populations: A Physiologically Based Approach with Validation

Abstract

The Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura), is a harmful insect pest for soft fruit cultivations. Even though its main hosts belong to the genera Prunus and Rubus, its high polyphagy and adaptability to new environments makes it a serious problem for farmers worldwide, who have reported several economic losses because of this pest. A wide series of proposals to control SWD are available and operate in line with the mechanisms of integrated pest management, demonstrating their high efficiency when applied at the opportune moment. This work aims to apply and validate a physiologically based model which summarises all the available information about D. suzukii biology, such as the relationship between environmental temperature and its development, fertility and mortality rates. The model provided, as a result, a description of a population of SWD females taking into consideration the multiple generations that occurred during the year. Simulations were then compared with field data collected in a three-year survey in two experimental fields located in the Sabina Romana area (Lazio, Italy). More specifically, D. suzukii males were monitored with traps in fields cultivated with mixed varieties of cherries and they were selected because of their clearer identification in comparison to females. Results showed a high level of reliability of simulations in representing the field data, highlighting at the same time that there is no discrepancy in simulating D. suzukii females in order to represent male populations.

Evaluation of a physiologically based model to predict Dalbulus maidis occurrence in maize crops: validation in two different subtropical areas of South America

“…A physiologically based model to describe insect pest populations was recently introduced by Rossini et al (2019a) to predict population dynamics of Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), a harmful leaf miner in tomatoes. It has also proven suitable to be applied to other species, as shown in other studies (Rossini et al, 2020a(Rossini et al, ,c,e, 2021. The application of this model to the case study of D. maidis was possible as other important biological information, such as the response of the maize leafhopper to environmental temperature, was discussed by Van Nieuwenhove et al (2016).…”

Do Castanea sativa wild provenances influence Dryocosmuskuriphilus Yasumatsu (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) infestations?

“…As future perspective, understanding better how the meteorological factors influences D. kuriphilus phenology on different chestnut varieties is fundamental for understanding the effects of the natural enemies complex (Bonsignore and Bernardo, 2018). Physical factors, such as temperature and relative humidity, in fact, drive insects population dynamics (Castex et al, 2018;Rossini et al, 2020cRossini et al, , 2020bRossini et al, , 2020a) by influencing development rate, fertility, survival, fitness and the abundance (Büntgen et al, 2020) and plant responses to external stresses (Gil-Tapetado et al, 2021).…”

“…Temperature and relative humidity data were analysed using the ANOVA test followed by a posthoc Tukey HSD test, with R software (R Core Team, 2018) and considering a = 0.05. The total rainfall was analysed with a x 2 -test calculated with EntoSim software (Rossini et al, 2019a(Rossini et al, , 2020a. Although ANOVA and x 2 test are not usually considered when analyzing meteorological data, they were used in the present study for two main reasons: i) it may be possible to assume that the trend in the measured daily values is negligible over the short periods of the year considered, ii) the meteorological and population dataset did not allow for a more refined analysis.…”

Models Applied to Grapevine Pests: A Review

“…A generalized additive model (GAM) was used to predict flight based upon some environmental and weather factors, namely some T and RH parameters: this model was developed with respect to blueberry [67], whereas a SDM modelled its expansion range [69]. Recently, a physiological model, based on the equations of Logan and Briére, was also published: this model forecasted the development, fertility, and mortality of D. suzukii [68].…”