True fruit flies of India

Fruit flies assumes economic significance primarily as pests of horticultural crops and also as beneficial weed biocontrol agents. Since fruit flies are pests of quarantine significance, apart from direct loss of yield and increased control costs, it may lead the loss of export markets and/or incur the cost of constructing and maintaining fruit treatment and eradication facilities. The term fruit flies is often confused with Drosophilidae, but true fruit flies belong to family Tephritidae and is one among the 10 families included in superfamily Tephritoidea (Pape et al., 2011). Though the common name " fruit flies" connotes it to be a fruit feeder, it is not true for all species included in this diverse taxon. They exhibit a diverse array of feeding habits which includes frugivores, leaf miners, seed feeders, gall makers; capitulum borers, saprophages and even parasitoids too. They can be easily separated from closely related families like Ulidiidae, Platystomatidae, Pyrgotidae by the combination of characters such as well developed frontal plate and prominent frontal setae, subcostal vein bent sharply anteriorly at right angle before the apex, weakened beyond the bend. In addition, the costa has three breaks viz., costal, humeral and subcostal (Hardy, 1973, 1974), vein R₁ dorsally with setulae; wing usually with colour pattern; cell bcu usually with an acute extension (White and Elson–Harris, 1992).