splash Members of the family Tephritidae are amongst the most economically important pests of edible fruits worldwide.  Species such as medfly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann), Oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), olive fly, Bactrocera oleae (Rossi), Mexican fruit fly, Anastrepha ludens (Loew), and various melon flies in the genera Dacus and Bactrocera all cause millions of dollars annually in control and monitoring costs.  Interest in utilizing parasitic Hymenoptera for management and control of pest tephritids dates to the early 1900s when initial efforts were made to locate natural enemies for medfly in western Australia and olive fly in Italy.  Subsequent success in Hawaii following introductions against medfly in 1913 initiated a long series of studies on parasitic wasps that attack tephritid pests.

Over 100 species of Braconidae have been reared from fruit-infesting tephritids throughout the world.  The vast majority of the confirmed host records are from members of the braconid subfamily Opiinae.  A few species each from the subfamilies Alysiinae and Braconinae have also been unequivocally associated with fruit-infesting tephritids.  We have also included the other families and genera of parasitoids that commonly attack fruit-infesting Tephritidae, but the focus of these web-pages is primarily on the Braconidae.  Current names for tephritid hosts are taken almost entirely from the Systematic Database of Names by Norrbom, Carroll, Thompson, White, and Freidberg (1998).  This has required an update to the host names as given in most of the publications associating parasitoids with their respective hosts.

This project consists of nearly 300 unique images in 171 taxon pages. It is highly annotated with over 830 linked citations to more than 180 unique references. Editing and development are now done nearly completely through an mx interface in this 'Version 3' incarnation.

The key, text, and images presented here were initially developed as part of an NSF-sponsored PEET project (DEB9712543). Updates have been sponsored by USDA/CSREES/IFAFS grant No 00-52103-9651 (for new rearing records from the Afrotropics), CDFA agreement No. 03-0554 (for links to olive fly parasitoids), the Texas A&M Conacyt Collaborative Research Program (for updating information on Rhagoletis parasitoids) and NSF/PEET project DEB0328922 (primarily for imaging and new web interface).

This project has been jointly developed by many members of the Wharton Lab. You can contact with comments, concerns, or corrections about the content, or regarding technical matters.

Cite this project: Wharton, RA and Yoder, MJ. Parasitoids of Fruit-Infesting Tephritidae. http://paroffit.org. Accessed on Mon Mar 18 21:48:35 -0500 2024.