Previous work on the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), indicated that sterile males from an old laboratory strain had low mating success in bisexual releases in a natural population in Hawaii. Here, we describe a field experiment that assessed whether the mating competitiveness of sterile males from the same strain was improved in male-only releases. Systematic censuses of the study site were conducted before and after male-only releases of marked sterile flies, and the abundance and distribution of fruit flies and leks, incidence of male calling, and location of matings were recorded during spring and summer study periods. The releases had no detectable impact on the abundance, distribution, or calling activity of wild males. Most of the released males joined preexisting mating aggregations of wild males and within these leks displayed similar calling activity as the wild males. Despite this, sterile males accounted for disproportionately fewer matings with wild females than expected by chance, and the mating success of sterile males recorded in the current study with unisexual releases was no greater than that observed in an earlier study using bisexual releases. The results are discussed in light of current strategies associated with the sterile insect technique.
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Shelly et al. (1996) studied this question.