## 4 Discussion
### Performance of Sterile Males After Their Release
Therefore, for small-scale SIT operations in locally diverse landscapes, such an approach is not detailed and site-specific enough. It should be emphasized that a very local spatial scale, of the order of several or several dozen hectares, corresponds approximately to the area of average lifetime activity and dispersal of individual medflies [25; 32]. The above seems to suggest that in such a situation, it may be more appropriate to approach the problem from the perspective of the individual insects. Indeed, in recent years, several agent- or individual-based models simulating the behaviour of individual medflies have been developed [24; 25; 27; 43; 44]. Although all of these models focus on reproducing the behavior and development of individual insects, they differ significantly in the extent to which they take into account local landscape features and generalize fly behavior. Among the distinctive features of the presented SIT-enhanced PESTonFARM model is its ability to reflect the details of medfly-relevant terrain features, either by generating hypothetical landscapes of varying complexity, or by converting terrain orthophotomaps into digital mosaics showing the structure (size, density and distribution) of tree crowns and the distribution of plots with fruits of different phenology. Moreover, in the simulation of the exploratory behavior and dispersal of individual insects, the model does not use simplifications commonly used on other models, such as particle diffusion and random or correlated random walks algorithms [42; 44; 45; 46]. Instead, the simulation of the daily exploration and movement of each individual fly is stochastically dependent on the current, daily changing pattern of features of the currently occupied and neighboring niches (\(10\times 10\) m sectors), as well as on the individual's age and the current ambient weather conditions [24; 25]. Such an approach greatly increases the realism of the simulation of the movements of individual flies operating in a heterogeneous environment and their shifts between plots with fruit of various phenology. For local SIT implementation, the presented model allows for the simultaneous simulation of daily events, distribution and interactions of individual wild females and the released sterile males. Importantly for the end user, the model estimates the seasonal distribution of medfly development stages (eggs, larvae, pupae and adults), their mortality caused by applied IPM measures (including SIT), their costs, and fruit infestation at harvest, separately for each IPM measure and for each fruit type. Our goal was to present only the SIT-related model components that were added to the earlier PESTonFARM model, which already had the ability to simulate complex IPM schemes consisting of several different methods [26]. The SIT-enhanced PESTonFARM model \"inherited\" these capabilities, with the additional ability to include SIT in the repertoire of IPM methods. The model can be used, among other things, to develop more complex and realistic locally adapted scenarios for mixed implementation of SIT and other IPM methods, and indeed, it is currently being used for this purpose within the REACT project. The results of such applications will be published separately.