The painted bug, Bagrada hilaris, is an agricultural pest in its original areas (Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East), and it has recently been recorded as an invasive species in southwestern part of the US, Chile, Mexico, and two islands in the Mediterranean basin. Its polyphagous diet causes severe damage to economically important crops. The control of this pest is primarily achieved by means of synthetic pesticides, which are often expensive, ineffective, and harmful to the ecosystem. Recent physiological bioassays to assess its potential control through the sterile insect technique demonstrated that mating between untreated females and males irradiated at doses of 64 and 100 Gy, respectively, resulted in 90% and 100% sterility of the eggs produced by the females. In this study, the mating abilities of virgin males irradiated at 60 and 100 Gy with virgin females were measured through a study of short-range courtship mediated by vibrational communication. The results indicate that males irradiated at 100 Gy emit signals with lower peak frequencies, mate significantly less than unirradiated males do, and do not surpass the early stages of courtship. Conversely, males irradiated at 60 Gy present vibrational signal frequencies that are comparable to those of the control and successfully mated males. Our findings suggest that B. hilaris individuals irradiated at 60 Gy are good candidates for the control of this species, given that they retain sexual competitiveness regardless of their sterility, through an area-wide program that incorporates the sterile insect technique.

The stink bug, Bagrada hilaris, is a pest of mainly Brassicaceae crops. It is native to Africa and Asia and was recently reported as invasive in the southwestern part of the USA and in South America. There are no mitigation programs in place that do not involve pesticides. Therefore, much attention has recently been paid to the study of this species in order to identify sustainable and effective control strategies, such as the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). In order to evaluate the suitability of the SIT on this pest, the mechanism of post-copulatory sperm competition was investigated. This is a polyandrous species, and it is thus important to understand whether irradiated males are able to compete with wild, e.g., non-irradiated, males for sperm competition after matings. Sperm competition was studied by sequentially mating a healthy virgin female first with a non-irradiated male, and then with a γ-irradiated (Co-60) one, and again in the opposite order. Males were irradiated at three different doses: 60, 80, and 100 Gy. The fecundity and fertility of the females, in the two orders of mating, were scored in order to perform an initial assessment of the success of sperm competition with a P2 index. Sperm from the non-irradiated male were utilized at the lowest irradiation doses (60 and 80 Gy), whereas the irradiated sperm were preferentially utilized at the highest dose (100 Gy). Bagrada hilaris exhibited high variability in P2 indexes, indicating a sperm-mixing mechanism.

Bagrada hilaris is an invasive stink bug causing important yield losses in Brassica crops. It originates from India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa and is reported as invasive in several southwestern US states, Hawaii, Mexico, Chile and in the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Pantelleria (Italy). In this study, we tested the effects of gamma rays on the longevity, fecundity and fertility of bagrada bugs. We irradiated them at two different stages of their life cycle (fifth-instar nymphs and two-week-old adults). Irradiation at the nymphal stage had a strong impact on female fecundity, with egg numbers approaching zero at a dose of 80 Gy. Similarly, a full suppression of female fertility was achieved at 80 Gy when they were mated with males irradiated as nymphs or as mature adults. For longevity, gamma rays had only a slight impact on adult male and female life span. Due to the evidence of a gregarious phase during the autumn, these results suggest that small-scale SIT-localized applications by massive collections of bagrada bugs at various stages of development during autumn, followed by irradiation and reintroduction to the field, might be a safe and economically sound approach of control. Research is currently underway to evaluate the fitness of sterile males and mating patterns. Further studies in confined-field conditions will be needed.