Abstract
Whiteflies are major pest damaging important agricultural crops such as tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and melons. In previous studies, whiteflies have been found to communicate using sounds in mating processes. Furthermore, their communication signal varies depending on species and biotypes. Since hybrid of whiteflies between different species and biotypes remains rare yet, acoustic communication of whiteflies may play an important role in their mating behavior. To clarify the importance of acoustic communication in whiteflies, in this paper, we examined the influence of suppressing acoustic sound on mating behavior by constructing a mechanism that artificially suppressions acoustic sound of whiteflies. The experimental results show that we can efficiently suppress the acoustic sound of whiteflies by putting the agar on a cucumber leaf on which whiteflies colonize. Furthermore, the number of the mating of whiteflies when their sound is suppressed was significantly smaller than that when their sound is not suppressed. The obtained results suggest that the acoustic communication of whiteflies plays a major role in their mating processes.
