Indigenous and invasive fruit fly diversity along an altitudinal transect in Eastern Central Tanzania

Katrien Geurts1a, Maulid Mwatawala2b, and Marc De Meyer3c*

1Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
2Department of Crop Science and Production, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania
3Entomology Section, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium

Abstract

The relative abundance of indigenous and invasive frugivorous fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) was evaluated spatially and temporally along an altitudinal transect between 581-1650 m in the Uluguru Mountains near Morogoro, Tanzania. The polyphagous invasive fruit fly Bactrocera invadens Drew, Tsuruta, and White and the indigenous fruit fly Ceratitis rosa Karsch show a similar temporal pattern, but are largely separated spatially, with B. invadens being abundant at lower elevation and C. rosa predominant at higher elevation. The polyphagous indigenous C. cosyra (Walker) coincides with B. invadens but shows an inverse temporal pattern. The cucurbit feeders B. cucurbitae (Coquillett) and Dacus bivittatus (Bigot) show a similar temporal pattern, but the former is restricted to lower elevations. Host availability and climatic differences seem to be the determining factors to explain the differences in occurrence and abundance in time and space.

Keywords: Ceratitis, Bactrocera, inter-specific competition, climate change

Correspondence: a katrien_geurts@yahoo.co.uk, b mwatawala@yahoo.com, c demeyer@africamuseum.be, *Corresponding author

Editor: David Heckel was Editor of this paper.

Received: 16 March 2011 | Accepted: 24 June 2011 | Published: 27 January 2012

ISSN: 1536-2442 | Volume 12, Number 12

Geurts K, Mwatawala M, De Meyer M. 2012. Indigenous and invasive fruit fly diversity along an altitudinal transect in Eastern Central Tanzania. Journal of Insect Science 12:12 available online: insectscience.org/12.12


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