A new species of fruit fly discovered from Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu is named after Siruvani, an ecological hotspot in the Western Ghats.
The fruit fly ‘Euphranta siruvani’ belonging to family Tephritidae was identified by researchers from a non-forest area near Siruvani and the discovery has been published in the Zootaxa journal recently.
According to the authors, 104 known species from genus Euphranta are distributed across the world, of which 14 are found in India. The discovery of Euphranta siruvani is the new addition to the list.
This fruit fly is differentiated from the other species of Euphranta by the presence of a ‘V’ shaped black band on the wing and prominent subapical band connected to the apical black patch, says the paper authored by K.J. David and K. Sachin from National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources, Bengaluru, D.L. Hancock from the UK, Sudhir Singh from Forest Research Institute, Dehradun and H. Sankararaman from Annamalai University.
“It lays eggs in fruits and the larvae feed on the pulp. We are yet to have more insights about the biology of the species,” said Mr. Sankararaman.
Apart from the fruit fly, Prof. S. Manickavasagam, also from Annamalai University, along with Mr. Sankararaman also discovered a new fairyfly species from Siruvani area. This discovery has been published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, recently. The species ‘Omyomymar hayati’ from the family of Mymaridae is named after Prof. Mohammad Hayat, Aligarh Muslim University, for his contributions to the taxonomy of Indian Chalcidoidea.
The fairyfly feeds on eggs laid by plant feeders such as hoppers. More study is required to understand its life cycle, according to the researchers.
