[6-1130-P] Other Categories (6th)

[6-1130-P-16] Behavioral Study of Vibrational Sensitivity in Whitefly

*Yasuhiko Nishijima¹, Koichi Mizutani^1,2, Tadashi Ebihara^1,2, Naoto Wakatsuki^1,2, Kenji Kubota³, Hiroyuki Uga⁴ (1. Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba(Japan), 2. Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, Division of Engineering Interaction Technologies, University of Tsukuba(Japan), 3. Agriculture Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization(Japan), 4. Saitama Prefecture Agriculture Research Center(Japan))

キーワード：whitefly , vibrational sensitibity, mating behavior

Whiteflies are major pests that damage a wide variety of plants such as tomatoes and cucumbers. Whiteflies suppress the growth of plants and reduce crop quality by acquisition feeding. Furthermore, they carry various viruses such as tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and cucurbit chlorotic yellows virus (CCYV). For this reason, control of whiteflies is an urgent matter for farming. The current control method is spraying pesticides. However, whiteflies acquire pesticide resistance early because it performs a generation cycle within one month. For example, Bemisia tabaci (biotype Q) has high resistance to most pesticides. Hence, the development of a new technology to control whiteflies is required. Focusing on the behavior of whiteflies, it has been reported that they communicate using leaf substrate-borne vibrations by oscillating their abdomens in their courtship behavior. Besides, our research group has clarified that their courtship behavior can be controlled by applying the artificial vibration of 200-1500 (Hz). However, the effective amplitude of artificial vibration has not been clarified yet. Hence, in this paper, we clarify the vibration sensitivity of whiteflies by experiments. The experimental condition is as follows. Bemisia tabaci (biotype Q1) (five males and five females) were released in a rectangular plastic case of approximate size 60×60×100 (mm³). The case has a hole with a diameter of 41 mm at its top and is covered with perilla leaf. The leaf was vibrated with various amplitudes (vibrational amplitude: 1.0, 0.6, and 0.3 μm), and the number of courtship behavior was measured by analyzing video recorded by the camera (FDR-AX45/SONY). The experiment was performed twice (each is for 1.5 hours) at each amplitude in an anechoic chamber. During this experiment, the temperature was 27-31 °C, and the humidity was 27-39 %. From experiments, we found that ratio of the number of mating behavior to that of courtship behavior is small (0 %) when vibration amplitude is 1.0 µm, although that is large (about 30 %) when vibration amplitude is 0.6 µm or less. Hence, we found that the sufficient amplitude of artificial vibration is about 1.0 µm. This result can be expected to contribute to the development of novel whitefly control technology.