Read the
magazine
story to find out more.
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![Photo: Psyttalia cf. concolor wasp Link to photo information](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090509202123im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/feb09/d1351-3i.jpg)
A beneficial wasp, Psyttalia cf. concolor,
is helping battle the olive fruit fly in California.Click the image for more
information about it.
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![For further reading](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090509202123im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/For-further-reading.gif)
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Olives May Be Rescued By Helpful Wasp
By Marcia Wood
February 17, 2009 Olives basking in sunny California
groves might find that their new best friend is a small brown wasp. Known to
scientists as Psyttalia cf. concolor, the little wasp can help
foil the olive fruit fly, a powerful natural enemy of olives.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
entomologist
Victoria
Y. Yokoyama and colleagues have imported and studied the beneficial wasp,
and have turned it looseby the thousandsin olive-fruit-fly-infested
groves in California, the nation's No. 1 producer of this popular fruit.
Now, the scientists are continuing to carefully evaluate the wasp's
effectiveness in thwarting the olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae.
First detected in California in 1998, olive fruit flies can now be found in
every part of California where olives are grown, according to Yokoyama. She's
based at the agency's
San
Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center near Parlier, Calif.
The olive fruit fly's young, which are slender, whitish maggots, ruin both
the olive and its premium oil by feeding voraciously on the fruit as it ripens.
But these destructive maggots are vulnerable to attack by the P. cf.
concolor wasp. The attack begins when the wasp lays its eggs inside the
maggots. When those eggs hatch, the wasp young kill the olive fly maggots by
feeding on them from the inside out.
The wasp is harmless to people, pets and plants. It appears to be more
effective in attacking olive fruit fly than some of the fly's other natural
enemies, called parasitoids, which were brought to California in the early
2000s.
Yokoyama's ongoing studies, funded by ARS, the Fresno-based
California Olive Committee, and other
agencies, continue to reveal new details not only about the friendly wasp, but
also about the olive fly itself.
Read
more about this research in the February 2009 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.