Pest Management in Horticultural Ecosystems
  • Year: 2023
  • Volume: 29
  • Issue: 2

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

1Department of Entomology, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari, Gujarat - 396 450, India

2Section of Applied Entomology, Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Horticulture Sciences, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Nowoursynowska 159, 02-776, Warsaw, Poland

*E-mail: d003208@sggw.edu.pl, jenamanoj401@gmail.com, Orcid: 0000-0002-2185-9944

Online published on 8 August, 2025.

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.

Keywords

Abundance, Bactrocera, Fruit flies, Gujarat, Diversity