Probing behavior of Diaphorina citri (Hemiptera: Liviidae) on Valencia orange influenced by sex, color, and size

Abstract

Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus is vectored by the psyllid Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Liviidae) and putatively causes Huanglongbing disease in citrus. Huanglongbing has reduced yields by 68% relative to pre-disease yields in Florida. Disease management is partly through vector control. Understanding vector biology is essential in this endeavor. Our goal was to document differences in probing behavior linked to sex. Based on both a literature review and our results we conclude that there is either no effect of sex or that identifying such an effect requires a sample size at least four times larger than standard methodologies. Including both color and sex in statistical models did not improve model performance. Both sex and color are correlated with body size, and body size has not been considered in previous studies on sex in D. citri. An effect of body size was found wherein larger psyllids took longer to reach ingestion behaviors and larger individuals spent more time ingesting phloem, but these relationships explained little of the variability in these data. We suggest that the effects of sex can be ignored when running EPG experiments on healthy psyllids.