In search of a better fly trap: chemical and visual ecology of Drosophila suzukii
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Drosophila suzukii is an invasive species of concern to fruit growers throughout temperate regions worldwide. Unlike most Drosophila species, D. suzukii has an enlarged and heavily sclerotized ovipositor that allows female flies to lay eggs in fruits before they are fully ripened and, in most cases, before fruits are harvestable. Initial efforts at mitigating damage have relied on chemical pesticides to reduce D. suzukii populations in crop areas; however, on-going research efforts have focused on more environmentally sustainable integrated pest management alternatives. This thesis investigates aspects of D. suzukii behaviour and physiology that promoted its successful global invasion. Chapter one discusses the role of behavioural and physiological plasticity in giving D. suzukii an ecological edge during introduction and successful invasion. Chapter two investigates D. suzukii host selection behaviour and preference among commercial fruits and novel native fruits in a boreal environment. I investigated the fruit characters thought to play a role in host choice, including fruit sweetness (brix), fruit acidity (pH), and fruit firmness (penetration force [gfmm2]). Based on D. suzukii behaviour observed in field settings, the investigation was expanded to include the role of fruit and foliage colour in host selection. Additionally, we beta-tested a citizen science initiative to identify native fruit species at risk and to confirm the range limits of D. suzukii in Atlantic Canada. Chapter three further explores colour preference and use of colour by D. suzukii as attraction cues, first as cues to differentiate among fruits of different ripeness stages, and second as visual targets for potential use in monitoring traps. Chapter four investigates D. suzukii physiological sensitivity and behavioural activity to odorants associated with fruits and foliage, and odorants known to be important to other Drosophila species. An iterative process of laboratory and field trials was used to test individual odorant compounds and odorant blends in combination with results of colour preference testing to improve trapping efficacy. Given the behavioural and physiological plasticity of D. suzukii, trials were conducted among different fruit crops and growing environments. Chapter five synthesizes lessons learned about D. suzukii behaviour and preferences to make recommendations for effective monitoring traps for blueberry and raspberry crop systems.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it