Influence of the mass rearing on the mating behavior of the melon fly, Dacus cucurbitae Coquillett (Diptera: Tephritidae)

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Males of the melon fly make lek on which each male compete for good calling site where a female comes and copulation occurs. Mass-reared(R) males were inferior to the wild males in competing ability among males on lek. More over the rate of remating was higher and duration to remating was shorter when the females mated with R-males, showing that R-males were also inferior to the wild males in competing ability of post copulation.Two types of mating were discovered: 1) courtship type where a male engages in wing vibration after encounter with a female for some time and then try to mount for copulation, and non-courtship type where a male try to mount just after encounter without wing vibration. R-males could copulate with wild females only when engaging in non-courtship type but could not when engaging in courting type, suggesting that wild females discriminated against R-males through the courting wing vibration of males.When insects are reared under artificial conditions, some level of domestication would be expected, and the domestication could resulted in deterioration in quality of reared insects. So if we want to use the sterile insect technique, the releasing program should be terminated as possible as short.