Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is not invasive through Asia: It's been there all along

Abstract

Oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), is a highly polyphagous fruit fly which, in the last 15 years, has invaded (with or without establishment) Africa, Europe and North America. As a direct result of these invasions, there is increasing research interest in the invasion history and spread patterns of this fly. A statement being repeatedly used in the B. dorsalis invasion literature is that the species was first identified from Taiwan in 1912 and that it subsequently spread through South‐East and South Asia during the 20th century. This assumption is incorrect and stems from: (a) an incomplete knowledge of B. dorsalis taxonomic history; and (b) a confounding of first taxonomic record with first invasion record. Rather than being first detected in Taiwan in 1912, the first record of oriental fruit fly was from “East India” (India orientali) under the synonymous name of Musca ferruginea by Fabricius in 1794, and in the 1910s, it was known not only from Taiwan, but widely across tropical Asia with records from India, Burma, Bengal, Sri Lanka (as Ceylon), Singapore and Indonesia (multiple islands). The taxonomic literature is very clear that oriental fruit fly has not invaded the rest of Asia from Taiwan since 1912, and this error should not continue to be repeated in the literature.

Prospects and challenges of implementing DNA metabarcoding for high-throughput insect surveillance

“…How these incidental detections are reported and eventually acted upon will present a major challenge to diagnostic laboratories and end users, due to the increased number of previously undocumented taxa being discovered for which knowledge of distribution or ecological significance may be missing [51, 53]. Many of these incidental detections will be taxa that simply have not previously been searched for, and when an appropriate management response is considered, it will be important not to conflate “first detection” in an invasion biology sense, where there was prior evidence of absence, with merely the first time a species has been formally identified in a region [255]. Hence a greater emphasis needs to be placed on conducting baseline surveys to establish comprehensive species checklists of endemic diversity and resolve synonymous taxa at the beginning of a surveillance programme to avoid creating sudden market access and trade issues [256].…”

Effect of Cold Storage on the Quality of Psyttalia incisi (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a Larval Parasitoid of Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae)

“…Batrocera dorsalis (Hendel) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is a notorious pest of economic importance, largely due to its traits of polyphagia, superior dispersal ability, outstanding climate adaptability, and high fecundity [ 1 ]. Over the last two decades, this fly has spread into many tropical and subtropical regions due to both human transportation and adult fly migration, causing considerable damage to commercial fruits and horticultural products as well as the associated import and export trade [ 2 , 3 ]. At present, the primary strategy for suppressing this pest involves spraying chemical insecticides, either alone or in combination with food-based lures [ 4 ].…”

Computational Evaluation of DNA Metabarcoding for Universal Diagnostics of Invasive Insect Pests

“…The 11,431 defunct or synonymous species names identified and corrected in our study clearly demonstrates that taxonomic synonyms remain one of the largest and seldom discussed issues within public sequence repositories (Leray et al, 2019). While taxonomic names must be free to change to reflect revised species concepts, this becomes a problem when historically defunct species names are retained in reference databases, propagating errors through later studies and the management decisions made from them (Clarke et al, 2019). For insect metabarcoding, issues arising from taxonomic synonyms will become most apparent as hierarchical taxonomic classifiers already widely adopted by microbiome researchers become more prevalent (Porter et al, 2014; Porter & Hajibabaei, 2018).…”