The original publication is available at www.plosone.orgPublication of this article was funded by the Stellenbosch University Open Access Fund.The invasive Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata, is one of the major agricultural and economical pests
globally. Understanding invasion risk and mitigation of medfly in agricultural landscapes requires knowledge of its
population structure and dispersal patterns. Here, estimates of dispersal ability are provided in medfly from South Africa at
three spatial scales using molecular approaches. Individuals were genotyped at 11 polymorphic microsatellite loci and a
subset of individuals were also sequenced for the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene. Our results show that
South African medfly populations are generally characterized by high levels of genetic diversity and limited population
differentiation at all spatial scales. This suggests high levels of gene flow among sampling locations. However, natural
dispersal in C. capitata has been shown to rarely exceed 10 km. Therefore, documented levels of high gene flow in the
present study, even between distant populations (.1600 km), are likely the result of human-mediated dispersal or at least
some form of long-distance jump dispersal. These findings may have broad applicability to other global fruit production
areas and have significant implications for ongoing pest management practices, such as the sterile insect technique.FruitGro Science and National Research FoundationFruitgro Science (JST), NRF-THRIP (P. Addison) and NRF Scarce Skill
