Bioassay approaches to assessing behavioral responses of plum curculio adults (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) to host fruit odor

We evaluated several approaches to developing a simple, sensitive, and reliable laboratory bioassay of responses of overwintered adult plum curculios (PCs), Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst), to host fruit odor or its attractive components. A high proportion of assayed PCs responded positively to odor of wild plums under no-choice, moving-air conditions in a wind tunnel and under dual-choice, still-air conditions in enclosed Petri dishes. Positive response to controls lacking host odor, however, was much greater in the wind tunnel, arguing in favor of bioassays under dual-choice conditions in still air to provide greater PC discrimination. Response to host odor (from wild plums or hexane extract of wild plums or Liberty apples) in Petri dish bioassay chambers proved greatest: (1) during the scotophase of PCs under total dark or dim red light conditions, (2) when Petri dishes were completely enclosed, (3) when PCs were starved for 24 or 48 hr, and (4) when PCs were tested within seven weeks after apple tree petal fall. Neither the sex of a PC nor the direction in which a PC was obliged to move to find the source of host odor (upward through a port in the Petri dish lid or downward through a port in the base) had a substantial effect on level of response to host odor or discrimination of host odor from a nonodorous control. We conclude that an enclosed Petri dish bioassay chamber of the type described here should be a valuable asset in the process of chemically identifying components of host fruit odor attractive to PCs