Natural Enemies of True Fruit Flies (Tephritidae) - USDA - aphis

Jeffrey N. L. Stibick
Parasites and Predators - TABLE 2
In addition, due to time constraints, there is no guarantee that all
parasites of the listed economic species are given here, although a
reasonable effort has been made. Parasites of many noneconomic
fruit flies were included in order to provide reasonable coverage of
most of the known Tephritid parasites as an aid in program efforts.
The cross-introduction of many parasites from one area to another
and their successes and failures in over a century of such attempts is
barely mentioned, and only when such introductions were successful.
One of the factors in successful or unsuccessful use of parasites deals
with the fact that the rate of parasitization may vary with the types of
hosts infested by fruit flies. That is, the attack response of the
parasitoids may be highly discriminating among the different hosts of
a particular fruit fly pest. For Biosteres arisanus, for example, certain
fruit like banana or coffee are more preferred by this parasitoid than
citrus for attack on fruit flies (Bautista & Harris, 1996).
Under NOTES, a very brief line or two may provide some information
about the parasite or predator which may be useful if the species is to
be considered for program purposes. In all cases, the references are
cited in this column.
Some economic species are listed without any parasites or predators.
This serves the purpose of highlighting that these species need further
foreign exploration. No known noneconomic species are so listed.
A good background document on the use of parasites for control of
fruit flies is “A Review of Mediterranean Fruit Fly Parasites with special
Reference to Western Australia” (Hardie, 1982). This paper is much
more than the title implies, as there is a lot of useful information and
references to aid in any program dealing with release of parasites.
Wharton, 1989, gave a good summary of classical biological control
efforts, pointed out some of the reasons for the many failures and gave
suggestions for improving future efforts.These items are summarized
below:
Early Failures of classical biological control of fruit flies
1. Transportation difficulties
2. Rearing difficulties
3. Emphasis on laboratory colonization
4. Exceptionally small numbers
5. Dropping species as a result of unsuccessful attempts
6. Study of the biology of natural enemies lacking
02/2004-01 Natural Enemies of True Fruit Flies 3-13
PPQ