One for all: Mating compatibility among various populations of olive fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) for application of the sterile insect technique

The olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae (Rossi), is the most important insect pest for the cultivation of olives worldwide. Considerable research efforts have been invested in the past decades to develop eradication or suppression tactics for use within an area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) approach that includes a sterile insect technique (SIT) component. One of the major obstacles encountered in the development of SIT for olive fruit fly was the inferior quality of the mass-reared flies, expressed among others evident primarily by sterile males having a different timing of peak mating and a lower mating propensity in comparison with their wild counterparts. In this study we assessed the mating behaviour and mating compatibility of olive fruit flies originating from four countries of the Mediterranean region (Croatia, France, Italy, Spain) in walk-in field cages and post zygotic compatibility (expressed as % egg hatch) under laboratory conditions. Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis whether a hybrid strain (Greece (domesticated)/Israel (wild)) adapted to laboratory rearing conditions showed any mating barriers with all the four “wild” populations. Finally, we examined the effect of colonization on the mating compatibility of the four newly established populations over three consecutive generations. The results showed no pre-zygotic (mating barriers) or post-zygotic isolations (measured by egg hatch%) among the olive fruit fly populations from the four countries tested. Also, there was no evidence of mating barriers between the hybrid strain and the wild populations of the Mediterranean region.