Peach fruit fly (PFF), Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) and Mediterranean fruit fly (MFF) are the most destructive insect pests of fruit and vegetables in Egypt. The current study was carried out over two successive years; 2012 and 2013 in thirteen districts of El-Beheira governorate and aimed to conduct a delimit survey and monitor the seasonal activity of PFF and MFF populations. The results show...

Comparative analysis of alternative splicing of orthologous genes from fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila pseudoobscura) and mosquito (Anopheles gambiae) demonstrated that both in the fruit fly genes and in fruit fly-mosquito comparisons, constitutive exons and splicing sites are more conserved than alternative ones. While >97% of constitutive D. melanogaster exons are conserve...

Insects can estimate distance or time-to-contact of surrounding objects from locomotion-induced changes in their retinal position and/or size. Freely walking fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) use the received mixture of different distance cues to select the nearest objects for subsequent visits. Conventional methods of behavioral analysis fail to elucidate the underlying data extraction. He...

Ants have long been renowned for their intimate mutualisms with trophobionts and plants and more recently appreciated for their widespread and diverse interactions with microbes. An open question in symbiosis research is the extent to which environmental influence, including the exchange of microbes between interacting macroorganisms, affects the composition and function of symbiotic microbial ...

The major architectural differences between most Arthropod classes and orders involve variations in the number, type and pattern of body appendages. We have utilized the emerging knowledge of appendage formation in fruit flies to begin to address the developmental and genetic basis of morphological diversity among insects. Butterflies, for example, differ from fruit flies in possessing larval a...

A multitude of insects and mites attack fruit crops throughout the tropics. The traditional method for controlling most of these pests is the application of chemical pesticides. Growing concern on the negative environmental effects has encouraged the development of alternatives. Inundatively and inoculatively applied microbial control agents (virus, bacteria, fungi, and entomopathogenic nematod...

Holometabolous insects pass through a sedentary pupal stage and often choose a location for pupation that is different from the site of larval feeding. We have characterized a difference in pupariation site choice within and between sibling species of Drosophila. We found that, in nature, Drosophila sechellia pupariate within their host fruit, Morinda citrifolia, and that they perform this beha...

The tolerance of ‘Apple’ banana (Musa sp.), avocado (Persea americana Mill.), mango (Mangifera indica L.), papaya (Carica papaya L.), and red ginger (Alpinia purpurata (Vieill.) K. Schum) inflorescences to carbonyl sulfide (COS) fumigation was studied. Commodities were exposed at 25°C to COS at various concentrations (1–6% (v/v) for banana; 1% and 2% for the other fruits for various times from ...