I conducted  two distinct projects on fruit fly species, Drosophila suzukii and Bactrocera dorsalis in Simon Fellous team. 

The project on D. suzukii consists in studying the repulsive impact of D. melanogaster microbiota on D. suzukii oviposition behavior. D. suzukii is a fruit fly responsible of significant fruit production losses. Recently, S. Fellous team observed that D. suzukii avoid fruits where D. melanogaster has already laid eggs, probably to avoid competition between larvae. Further investigations have shown that the repulsive effect of D. melanogaster dissapears when flies are axenic. Thus, we are currently trying to decipher the mechanism behind this repulsive phenomenon by performing experiments with axenic or gnotobiotic fly lines, in which we inoculated specific candidate bacterial strains. 

The project on B. dorsalis I'm leading takes place at Icipe, in Nairobi, Kenya. B. dorsalis lay eggs in mango fruits and is therefore responsible of significant mango production loss. The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a strategy used to fight  such pests and consist in releasing massive populations of sterile males in the environment, with which endemic females will mate. As these males are sterile no progeny will be produced and after repeated sterile male releases, the fly population will be reduced and may ultimately become instinct. The impact of such strategy can be boosted by spraying entomopathogenic fungal spores on sterile males, in order to infect and kill endemic individuals during courtship behaviors. In this project, I aim at identifying a Metarhizium anisoplae strain that would maximize the the efficiency of the "Boosted SIT". We are doing so by measuring several pathogenic traits like infectivity, and virulence, and testing our best candidates in mesocosm environments.