Fruit fly

Drosophilidae

Insect with chitinous carapace
Flying, crawling

Annoying pest

Fruit flies are common all over the world. These tiny flies can multiply explosively in unhygienic plant waste storage areas. These pests often appear in organic waste bins and compost heaps. From here they also fly into the home and are particularly fond of laying eggs on overripe fruit. In large kitchens, wine presses and breweries, they multiply particularly strongly in summer. In food processing plants, fruit flies survive the whole year because they can continuously reproduce there.

The larvae of fruit flies (Drosophila repleta) live in sewers and transmit bacteria.

MORE DATA

Class: Insects
Size: 1 to 6mm
Weight: Variable
Age: 2 to 8 weeks
Appearance: Yellowish brown to brown, red eyes
Food: Fermenting plant matter
Distribution: Worldwide, 3’000 species
Original location: Unknown
Habitat: Damp forests or forest edges
Natural enemies: Carnivorous plants
Threatened with extinction: No

In German usage, two genera of this suborder Brachycera are mainly known:
– Drosophilidae (also known as fruit fly or vinegar fly), with the cherry vinegar fly being a particularly well-known and common pest (introduced to Europe from Southeast Asia in 2009).
– Tephritidae (also known as bohr flies).
The size of the fruit fly is about 1 to 6mm, the average is 2mm. They can be found almost everywhere: in damp deciduous forests and forest edges as well as near human settlements. They are attracted to rotten fruit and drink residues, e.g. in an opened bottle, from which they ingest fermented substances.
A distinction can be made between wild species (ecologically bound to woody plants) and cultivated species (everywhere where people store or dispose of their fruit).
Fruit fly females lay up to 400 eggs in germinating plant material or other substrates that can be used as larval food. Like other fly larvae, the larvae that hatch from them go through three stages in the form of a typical maggot stage. Most larvae are saprophagous, i.e. they feed on dead plant remains or rotten fruit. They eat microorganisms that decompose fruits, such as yeast and bacteria. Others are pythophagous and therefore live in the leaves and stems of plants.
In general, fruit flies are considered more of a nuisance than a pest, as most species reproduce in decaying material. The exceptions are Zaprionus indianus, which feeds on figs in Brazil, and Drosophila suzukii, which feeds on thin-skinned fruits such as raspberries and cherries. These are therefore agricultural pests.