Can competition be superior to parasitism for biological control? The case of spotted wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii), Drosophila melanogaster and Pachycrepoideus vindemmiae

Drosophila suzukii and Drosophila melanogaster coexist with different but overlapping resource use in the field. When forced to completely or partially share resources in the laboratory, D. melanogaster outcompetes D. suzukii. Adult D. suzukii and D. melanogaster females were allowed to compete for access to a common oviposition resource in pairwise and population scale experiments. We tracked the offspring emergence to explore the factors across life stages that might affect the success of D. suzukii in the laboratory compared to a closed field simulation cage experiment with a generalist Drosophila parasitoid, Pachycrepoideous vindemmiae. When in competition as adults, D. melanogaster produced more offspring that survived to pupation than D. suzukii. In addition, D. melanogaster produced more offspring when in competition with a conspecific than when in competition with D. suzukii. Competitor identity did not affect the number of D. melanogaster offspring in pairwise and cage experiments. However, in the presence of D. melanogaster, the number of D. suzukii offspring in both pairwise and cage experiments was dramatically reduced than in cages without this competitor. In the presence of both D. melanogaster and P. vindemmiae, there were marginally more D. suzukii than when only D. melanogaster was present. These results suggest that competition was an important factor limiting D. suzukii numbers. Limiting D. suzukii numbers through interspecies competition may eventually be an exploitable method of biocontrol in the field.