Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Drosophila suzukii

The spotted wing fruit fly on sweet million cherry tomatoes. This is a new  invading species of fruit fly. They harm ripening fruit by injecting their eggs into the fruit.    I learned of these on the news last summer and found them on a brown turkey fig tree one week later while gleaning fruit. I collected figs flies and leaves and sent them to OSU. It turn out it was the first documented time this fly was documented on a fig!
, commonly called the spotted-wing drosophila, is a vinegar fly—closely related toDrosophila melanogaster (the common vinegar fly). Native to southeast Asia, D. suzukii was first described in 1931 by Matsumura. Observed in Japan as early as 1916 by T. Kanzawa,[1] D. suzukii was widely observed throughout parts of Japan, Korea, and China by the early 1930s[1]. By the 1980s, the "fruit fly" with the spotted wings was seen in Hawaii. It first appeared in North America in central California in August 2008[2] and is now widespread throughout California's coastal counties[3], western Oregon, western Washington,[2], and parts of Florida.[4]

D. suzukii is a fruit crop pest and is a serious economic threat to soft summer fruit; i.e., cherries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes, and others[2].


From wikipedis. 
Drosophila suzukii