Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Call to order, Dave Taylor

Comments from Local Arrangements Committee - Jerry Hogsette welcomed the group, made general comments about the hotel, the meeting room charges, and the Kissimmee area.

Comments from CSREES representative - Rick Meyer updated the group on CSREES info; talked about CSREES web design project; announcement for RFA for upcoming projects; check REEUSDA to check on funding opportunities, RAMP, etc.

Comments from Administrative Advisor - Rick Roeder, University of Arkansas, talked about his new role as project administrator and how happy he was to be associated with this group.

S-1005 Project Reports

Objective 1 - Jerry Hogsette - Alberto Broce discussed last year?s emergence trapping in Manhattan and the evidence for overwintering stable fly, i.e. stable fly adults caught in emergence traps in early spring, 2003. He talked about repeating the project this year with some changes, e.g. putting temperature probes in the habitat. Broce joined with Roger Moon, Don Rutz & Phil Kaufman, and Dave Taylor in planning a group effort the next 12 months to Put out sticky traps and emergence traps simultaneously and check for additional evidence of overwintering at their 4 northern locations.

Objective 2 - Roger Moon discussed the 2003 dispersal data from Meade, NE, where rolled hay residues were marked with fluorescent dust and stable flies were marked as they emerged through the dusted hay. Marked flies were captured on sticky traps on the Meade complex. Some of the Results: Movement was random with respect to distance and time; both sexes dispersing equally; more blood-fed flies near cattle.

12:00 - 1:30 PM - LUNCH

Objective 3 -
Part 1 - Alberto Broce - Ludek Zurek is finding many biological substances that look promising for stable fly control in rolled hay residues; boric acid also looks promising.

Part 2 - Dave Boxler - Automated sprayer was evaluated. Many problems with break-downs, etc. Results: OK for use on dairy animals in a chute out of the milking parlor, but not really practical for pastured or rangeland beef cattle.

Lane Foil - Nzi traps - cotton fabric works best; traps not really very efficient because many flies arrive at the traps but few actually enter. Nzi made from cotton catches 2x higher than Nzi made from polyester. Stable fly captures with Nzi made from cotton material are no different than those made with alsynite cylinder trap. The blue/black combination is very important for attracting stable flies. Pesticides used in treated targets are not repellent to stable flies.

Jerry Hogsette - Treated targets were tested for longevity. Outside targets made from blue Trigger-Royal Box 65% Poly/35% Cotton performed best at all 3 levels of L-Cyhalothrin and are suitable for use in the field during a 3-month stable fly season. Trigger-Royal Box was purchased at Wal-Mart.

Part 3 - Roger Moon - Chris Geden evaluation hymenopteran parasitoids for use against horn flies, stable flies and other nuisance flies. Parasites attacked all hosts with the exception of Sarcophaga bullata. Horn fly good host for all parasites tested. All parasites had Wolbachia.

Alan Slanski (reported by Lane Foil) - continuing to evaluate nematodes, along with Dave Taylor.

Part 4 - Steve Dobson - Wolbachia not found in stable flies in the Lexington area. Infection of stable flies by transfection is being attempted, but no success yet. This will be continued in 2004. Stable fly monitoring in the field was done by John Webb, but he retired in January, 2004, and there is no one to continue this work at present at the University of Kentucky.

Part 5 - Steve Dobson - Is working on degree-day model; Roger Moon will continue to analyze stable fly seasonality data sent to him by the group.

Committee Business - Officers will remain the same for another year. Meeting in 2005 to be held by LSU (Lane Foil) either January 13-14, or January 6-7. Dave Taylor asked for brief report by project members along with publications by the end of January.

Objective 1. Identify, characterize and rank developmental habitats of stable flies and assess their over wintering success in those habitats Group Leader Jerry Hogsette, USDA, ARS, CMAVE

U. Minnesota - Objective (1): Larval habitats at two MN dairies were scouted at monthly intervals to identify substrates with actively developing stable fly populations. As noted in the previous year, active breeding was detected from early summer through autumn in wet feed debris and margins of manure storage lagoons.

Kansas State U. - On April 8, thirteen pyramidal emergence traps (covering 0.25 square meter each) were placed over mounds of straw-manure mixture at the KSU dairy to monitor emergence of potentially overwintering stable flies. The earliest flies were caught in the emergence traps was in the April 17-24 period, and the last ones during May 29?June 5. These results support the alternative hypothesis that stable flies are able to overwinter as larvae, protected from winter freezing temperatures within manure/straw/silage piles.

Kansas State U. - Results indicate that both migration and overwinetring might contribute to pioneer fly populations; the importance of each at any locality would be a function of the latitude. Although freezing temperatures had been common and it had snowed in the Manhattan area by mid-November, stable flies were still being trapped during period of December 2-9.

ARS-MLIRU - Stable fly production at a round bale feeding site was quantified with emergence traps. Based upon on calculations, each round bale feeding circle produced approximately 1 million flies per year.

Objective 2 Assess dispersal by stable flies on local and regional scales

Part 1: Local Dispersal. Group leader Roger Moon, University of Minnesota

Iowa State U. - Analysis was performed on16 years (about 64 successive generations) of stable fly population densities monitored 5 days weekly in Ames, Iowa. Reproductive success was found to be inversely density-dependent. Egg and larval survival were positive functions of both temperature and precipitation. Adult densities responded negatively to temperature.

Cornell - In 2003 stable fly first arrival was monitored using Alsynite sticky traps. Stable flies first arrived in New York on June 06, as compared with June 04 in 2002. A very sharp rise in numbers was not observed until July 09 (June 05 in 2002). The first-arrival date coincided with a major storm front. Storm fronts are known to transport migratory insects such as potato leafhopper.

U. Minnesota - Objective (2): Analysis of results from a mark and recapture study at Mead, NE, demonstrated that male and female stable flies dispersed equally, and radially at a rate of 0.9 km per day.

U. Minnesota - Analysis of patterns of seasonal abundance over 16 years in Ames, IA, indicated dates of first detection were when local heat unit accumulations averaged 61 day-degrees above a base of 12.9 degrees C. Variation was weakly and inversely correlated with frequencies of southerly wind events, and independent of all other measures of winter duration and severity. Magnitudes of the first generation in spring were independent of densities in preceding autumns and measures of winter severity. During the breeding season, population growth was negatively related to density of parents and temperatures experienced by nulliparous offspring, and positively related to temperature and rainfall experienced by larvae. These findings will shape development of a spatially explicit model to simulate imposition of control tactics (source reduction, traps,insecticides, etc.) on a regional scale.

Kansas State U. - For the third consecutive year, stable fly populations on 15 pastures around Manhattan, KS continued to be monitored with twice/week serviced alsynite cylinder traps. Numbers of stable flies captured in the traps were as low as those in 2002, thus much lower than in 2001. In several instances (between April 11 and June 30), the number of flies caught in the majority of the traps during a sampling period increased significantly over those in the previous one. These events correlated with the wind direction shifting to blowing from the south which supports the hypothesis that many of the spring pioneer flies in the Midwest are stable flies that migrate long distances with southerly winds preceding cold fronts.

ARS-MLIRU - A grid of 27 Broce traps was used to monitor stable fly populations at the University of Nebraska, Agricultural Research and Development Center. As in previous years, stable fly populations were bimodal with the first peak towards the end of June and the second in September. Unlike previous years, the late peak exceeded the early peak. Fly emergence from round bale hay feeding sites seemed to account for the early peak. No source of the late peak flies was found despite extensive searching.

Objective 2 Assess dispersal by stable flies on local and regional scales

Part 2: Regional Dispersal. Group leader David Taylor, USDA-ARS, Lincoln

Iowa State U. - Variation in mitochondrial DNA was assayed in stable flies from Russia, England, and USA. The object is to understand biogeography, gene flow and dispersion in stable flies. Four variants at five mitochondrial loci have been found to date. The preliminary data suggest that North American stable flies are more closely related to flies in European Russia than to flies in England.

U. Arkansas - mtDNA cytochrome oxidase II gene from house fly, face fly, stable fly, horn fly, and black garbage fly was sequenced. The nucleotide sequence codes for a 229 amino acid peptide. The COII sequence is A+T rich (74.1%), with up to 12.3% nucleotide and 8.4% amino acid divergence among the five taxa. Of the 688 nucleotides encoding for the gene, 135 nucleotide sites (19.6%) are variable, and 55 (8.0%) are phylogenetically informative. A phylogenetic analysis, revealed that the two haematophagus species, horn fly and stable fly, form a sister group.

Objective 3. Part 1. Source Reduction, Group Leader Alberto Broce, Kansas State University

Objective 3. Part 2. Traps and Insecticides. Group Leaders Lane Foil, Louisiana State University & Jack Campbell, University of Nebraska Lincoln

Louisiana State U. - The daily capture of sticky Alsynite (Broce) traps was compared to the catch of Nzi traps made of two different types of cloth (cotton and polyester). We compared the Broce trap to the two Nzi traps in a 3X3 Latin Square design repeated 3 times at 3 sites. The mean number of flies per trap were 222.9 for the Broce, 125.1 for the polyester Nzi, and 257.9 for the cotton Nzi.; the average number of stable flies per trap per day was not significantly different; We compared the Nzi to an electric 1 m square 50% blue-50% black (UK) target, and the capture on the target was approximately twice that of the Nzi. In one study, the mean hourly catch for a UK target for 9 one-hr assays was 527 with a maximum of 1,335 per hour. The targets could potentially eliminate over 10,000 adult stable flies per day. If insecticide impregnated targets are developed for stable fly control, we need to make certain that the insecticides to not repel flies. We treated two UK targets with 0.1% lamda-cyhalothrin and compared them to an untreated target. One treated target and the untreated target were placed in electric grids that were run continuously and the other treated target grid was run at a 30 second on and 30 second off cycle. The targets were placed in each of 3 sites on 4 occasions. No difference in catch was observed; the mean number of flies collected per hour was 134.9 for the untreated target, 134.0 for the treated-continuous, and 101.2 for the treated-cycle. This study will be repeated, but it does not appear that the treated targets will be repellent for stable flies. We also compared the relative efficacy of different fabric types (cotton, dark polyester, light polyester and a cotton-polyester mix) as potential targets. The mean number of flies per target per hour was not significantly different; 63.7 for cotton, 44.4 for dark polyester, 70.3 for light polyester, and 84.3 for mix. We also conducted studies to determine the influence of weather, time, fabric type, insecticide type and insecticide concentration on the mortality of stable flies from a susceptible laboratory colony exposed for 30 seconds to treated targets. Our standard mix cloth was treated with three concentrations (0.0, 0.5 and 1.0 %) of lamda-cyhalothrin and one concentration (0.1%) of zeta-cypermethrin (EC), zeta-cypermethrin (EW), cypermethrin (EC), and permethrin (EC). We also treated the mix, cotton and cotton canvas with 0.1% lambda-cyhalothrin. A sample of each treatment was stored inside and outdoors in Gainesville, FL, for three months. An assay was conducted for each treatment at day 1 and then once per month. After three months outside, 100% of the flies exposed to the all three concentrations of lambda-cyhalothrin and zeta-cypermethrin (EC) were dead within 30 minutes of exposure, but this was not the case for the other insecticide treatments. The same result was observed for the mix fabric, but none of the other three fabric types.

Objective 3. Part 3: Biological Control Group Leaders Roger Moon, University of Minnesota & Chris Geden - USDA, ARS, CMAVE

An evaluation of two pteromalid parasitoids was conducted in nine dairy calf coverall buildings in 2003. We evaluated Muscidifurax raptor, M. raptorellus and no-release protocols for house fly and stable fly management. Adult stable fly numbers were monitored weekly at each farm. Although data have not been fully analyzed and a second year of research is pending, it appears that these two species, as released in this study, did not significantly impact stable fly numbers on the dairies.

Objective 3. Part 4: Wolbachia

U. Kentucky- Local surveillance indicates that Wolbachia is not found in KY stable flies. In the next year, additional flies from a larger geographic area is to be done by David Taylor. Dobson will focus in 2004 on improving techniques for Wolbachia transfection (artificial introduction of Wolbachia into insects via embryonic microinjection).

McKay, T. and A.B. Broce. Discrimination of self-parasitized hosts by the pupal parasitoid Muscidifurax zaraptor (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae). Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. (In Press)

Szalanski, A.L., and C.B. Owens. 2003. Sequence change and phylogenetic signal in muscoid COII DNA sequences. DNA Sequence 14: 331-334.

Geden, C. J. 2003. Mass-rearing beneficial insects for biological control of flies. Proceedings, IOBC Workshop on Arthropod Mass Rearing and Quality Control, Montpellier, France. September 2003.

Geden, C. J., M. A. Ferreira de Almeida and A. Pires do Prado. 2003. Effects of Nosema disease on fitness of the parasitoid Tachinaephagus zealandicus (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae). Environ. Entomol. 32:1139-1145.

Boohene, C. K., C. J. Geden, and J. J. Becnel. Evaluation of remediation methods for Nosema disease in Muscidifurax raptor (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae). Environ. Entomol. 32:1146-1153.

Geden, C. J. and D. C. Steinkraus. 2003. Evaluation of three formulations of Beauveria bassiana for control of lesser mealworm and hide beetle in Georgia poultry houses. J. Econ. Entomol. 96: 1602-1608.