Preference and performance of Drosophila suzukii on Prunus species: A potential eco-friendly pest management tool

Understanding the relationship between preference and performance of polyphagous insects is crucial to develop eco-friendly pest management strategies. Here we examined behavioural and performance responses of Drosophila suzukii Matsumura (Diptera: Drosophilidae) to variation in both host plant species and fruit development stage. Flight activity response, oviposition preference, egg hatching and larval-pupal survival and development period measurements were used to assess the preference-performance of D. suzukii on two Prunus species, the European bird cherry, Prunus padus L, as a wild host, and the sweet cherry, Prunus avium L, as a commercial host. Tunnel bioassays revealed that D. suzukii females exhibited clear preference for P. padus, particularly when fruits were in the ripening stage. A particularly important difference was that the deposited eggs failed to hatch on P. padus fruits, whereas they successfully hatched on P. avium fruits. Other important findings from the offspring performance bioassays on intentionally larvae-infested fruits revealed that P. padus, when compared with P. avium, had two types of impact on performance: i) a significant reduction in the number of emerged adults, and ii) a significant delay in the larval-pupal development time when the larvae were young. By demonstrating that D. suzukii females were unable to discriminate the plant host that offered the highest fitness to their offspring, we provide a promising insight into the importance of P. padus within an eco-friendly tactic to potentially manage D. suzukii populations.