Hi everyone,
I have been counting eggs and larvae of SWD inside blackberry fruits collected from the field and noticed many eggs seem to lack their characteristic pair of respiratory filaments. Are these SWD eggs or are they perhaps eggs laid by some other fruit-infesting insect species? The eggs are pearly white, somewhat oblong, look very much like SWD eggs, but lack the two long filaments.
Hope you can help,
Blair
Hi Blair,
I've worked with mirid eggs and never saw the respiratory horns missing from them. However, I can imagine that they can be knocked off of your SWD eggs if the fruit was handled roughly. You said that the blackberries were collect from the field, so it might just be a matter of being more gentle in how they are handled.
Do you plan to allow the larvae to hatch and then develop to adults? That is the best way to figure out if they are different species or not.
Hope that helps and hope all is well.
David
Thanks David,
Our extraction method (shaking broken fruit in water) is pretty rough, perhaps we will return to fruit dissection to see if more eggs with hairs appear.
Thanks good buddy,
Blair
Hi Blair, I haven't come across broken filaments often. I have noticed that the filaments can break off if handling blueberries (with eggs in them) with forceps. It has happened when the forceps are on the filaments and the berry spins, breaking the filaments.
I have found that incubating infested fruit and allowing adult emergence is the best way to measure infestation. I think the salt extraction method and counting eggs are underestimating the infestation.
Hope all is well!
Thanks Lindsy,
I do use forceps to dissect individual fruits and sometimes the berries shift position, and it is likely that some eggs are damaged by sheer force of prying fruits apart. I'll be more gentle in the future. All the best,
Blair
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