The Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) is a worldwide pest that infests hundreds of different fruits and other crops and had an estimated $1.5 billion impact during its last infestation in California. Traps play a big role in both detecting and eradicating an infestation in an area. To selectively target female flies, researchers in recent years have experimented with playing recorded broadcasts of buzzing males. The required outdoor sound levels, however, call for an amplifier–loudspeaker system that is large, expensive, and easily damaged in harsh weather. At last month’s meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Steven Garrett and Kent Lau of the Pennsylvania State University unveiled a different method based on thermoacoustics (for a primer, see the article in Physics Today, July 1995, page 22). The characteristic sound of the male medfly’s wing-fanning vibrations has a dominant fundamental tone at about 350 Hz, a weak...

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