Diversity and morphometrics of fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in South Gujarat, India

Abstract

An extensive survey was conducted to find out the distribution of different fruit fly species in the Navsari district of Gujarat from January to December, 2022. Among different fruit fly species, Bactrocera spp., are widely distributed and caused significant damage to horticultural crops. Four fruit fly species viz., Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), B. zonata (Saunders), B. correcta (Bezzi), and B. cucurbitae (Coquillett), were recorded from six talukas, namely Navsari, Jalalpore, Gandevi, Chikhli, Khergam and Vansda. Among all species, B. dorsalis (53.87%) was the most abundant followed by B. zonata (19.92%) and B. correcta (2.91%). Whereas, B. cucurbitae was the most common in cucurbits with relative abundance of 23.30 per cent. The activity of fruit flies was observed throughout the year. However, the peak fruit fly population was observed between April to July and gradually decreased from September to December. Higher diversity index was recorded in Gandevi, followed by Navsari and Jalalpore. Bactrocera dorsalis was larger than B. zonata and B. correcta. However, female flies were bigger than their male counterparts among all fruit fly species.