Interaction Between Visual and Olfactory Cues During Host Finding in the Tomato Fruit Fly Neoceratitis cyanescens

摘要: Herbivorous insects searching for a host plant need to integrate sequence of multimodal sensory inputs. We conducted series no-choice experiments in laboratory wind tunnel examine the behavioral response specialist fruit fly, Neoceratitis cyanescens (Diptera: Tephritidae), visual and olfactory stimuli presented singly or combination (e.g., colored model with without odor). also studied influence flow, age, sex on flies. In two-choice experiments, we evaluated ability mature females discriminate between two models emitting vs. non-host odor clean air. can use independently interactively locate their host, whereas immature males respond primarily odor. absence wind, mainly information fruit. significantly increases probability speed locating situation bright orange spheres, flies accurately detected sphere odorless Nevertheless, they preferred land when was blue. Furthermore, source were spatially decoupled (90 180°), >50% that landed initially performed an oriented flight toward source, then turned back while after one landing, thus suggesting be ultimate indicator