African frugivorous flies

The family of true fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) includes more than 5000 species worldwide, of which more than 1000 are found in Africa. About 40% of these are frugivorous in the sense that the immature stages (the larvae) develop in fruits and feed on the plant tissue causing major damage.  They are considered to be one of the most economically important groups of insects in the Afrotropical Region. They cause millions of Euros of damage to fruits and vegetables, and are a major constraint to commercial and subsistence farming in the region. In addition to indigenous pests, a number of Asian representatives have been inadvertently introduced on the continent and adjacent islands, causing further disruption.

Besides the several pest species, the large majority of the true fruit flies are limited to a small number of indigenous host fruits, mainly from trees and shrubs. Most of them are associated with forested areas, and can be used as indicator species for the biodiversity of a given area. The majority (about 60%) are non-frugivorous fruit flies, and the larvae develop in other parts of host plants such as the stems or flowerheads.

The Royal Museum for Central Africa, in collaboration with several research institutes and universities in Belgium, Africa and elsewhere, has been conducting research on frugivorous fruit flies. The main focus and interest has been taxonomy and systematics, phylogeny and evolutionary ecology of the group. Our research team relies on an integrative approach bringing together the complementary expertise of morphological taxonomists, molecular biologists, agronomists and microbiologists and has embarked on several related research questions such host plant range and specialization, biogeography and predictive distribution modeling, pest detection, monitoring, control and management, etc.  This research, spanning more than two decades, has resulted in several research outputs. This website aims at bringing together and being a main reference point for the research and results produced by the group on this interesting group of organisms.

The website provides you with an overview of the different products and outputs that are made available. It provides also a summary of all ongoing activities in the field by researchers of the RMCA, and presents the different partnerships. Any recent highlights can also be discovered here.

Credits:
This website is developed as an output of the projects ‘AGROVEG’, ‘DISPEST’, and 'DISPEST_2' supported by the Belgian Development Cooperation within the framework programme with RMCA.
We would like to thank the colleagues of the IT unit at RMCA (Franck Theeten, Benoît Hardy, and Thanh-son Du) for their valuable support in the development of this website.