Assessment of capture efficacy of Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura)trapping devices in mass trapping and release recapture trials

Abstract: Winter is considered a bottleneck for D. suzukii pest population development. Therefore, in this study, the possibility to reduce the overwintering population using attractive traps was assessed with the aim to delay the population development in spring. A trapping device combined with a commercially available bait was tested in release recapture and mass trapping trials in a D. suzukii overwintering site, to verify the potential of this control strategy. Results show low recapture rates and limits in improving the capture efficacy by incrementing the number of traps within a target area. We conclude that mass trapping with the devices tested in this study can unlikely reduce the overwintering population of D. suzukii in a significant way.