Insect pests of agricultural significance pose substantial risks for food security in an ever-growing global population. Conventional control measures used against these pests have had varying degrees of success and examples of pesticide resistance and offtarget effects of pesticides highlight the urgent need for the development of new, environmentally benign control methods. Deployment of ‘self-limiting’ insects is a species-specific approach that can be used to combat many species, including two major agricultural insect pests, the Medfly, Ceratitis capitata, and the Diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella. In this thesis, I used transgenic ‘self-limiting’ strains of medfly and DBM to stress-test self-limiting technology in laboratory and field scenarios. In Chapter 2, I tested the effect of larval diet composition on the penetrance of a female-specific self-limiting system in the OX3864A strain of medfly under simulated control conditions. In Chapter 3 I investigated the potential for resistance to selflimiting systems, using artificial selection for survival under a low dose of the transgene antidote, in the OX3864A medfly strain. In Chapter 4 I used the OX4319L self-limiting strain of DBM and showed that its responses to an artificial pheromone source in wind tunnel flight trials were comparable to the wild type. I also described the field dispersal characteristics of a long-term, laboratory-reared wildtype DBM strain in a mark-release-recapture trial. In Chapter 5 I demonstrated that the OX4319L DBM strain had comparable field longevity, but reduced mating competitiveness, in comparison to a wild-caught DBM strain. Finally, in Chapter 6, I discuss the broader context and address the practicalities, regulatory controls and implications of transgenic technologies for insect pest control under open field conditions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:716438 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Bolton, Michael |
| Publisher | University of East Anglia |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/63943/ |
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