Kim, Chulyoung

Here is a famous insect pest called western flower thrips (WFT), Frankliniella occidentalis. WFT is a vector transferring plant virus called tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), which causes devastating crop damage over the world. First, I have an interest in how the thrips picks up and multiplies TSWV in its internal body. There must be an immune defense from WFT against TSWV. In other way, TSWV may suppress WFT immune responses to protect from the antiviral responses. Second, are there any volatile signal from TSWV to attract WFT? If I identify the attractive signal, I can use the chemical to attract and kill the thrips without use of chemical insecticides. Finally, there are several semiochemicals identified from WFT for aggregation pheromone, trail pheromone, and alarm pheromone. Can I optimally integrate these semiochemicals to distrupt the communication of WFT populations for mass trapping?