The Tephritoidea are a superfamily of

flies Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...

. It has over 7,800 species, the majority of them in family Tephritidae. The following families are included: *

Ctenostylidae The enigmatic fly family Ctenostylidae is a small group of very rare flies formerly included in the family Pyrgotidae (as the subfamily "Lochmostyliinae"); the principal reason for their inclusion in the Pyrgotidae was the absence of ocelli, a fea ...

* Eurygnathomyiidae *

Lonchaeidae The Lonchaeidae are a family of acalyptrate flies commonly known as lance flies. About 500 described species are placed into 9 genera. These are generally small but robustly built flies with blue-black or metallic bodies. They are found, mainly ...

- lance flies *

Pallopteridae Pallopteridae is a family of flies. The various species are collectively called flutter-wing flies, trembling-wing, or waving-wing flies, because of the striking vibration of the wings in many species. Over 70 species in about 15 genera are foun ...

— flutter flies *

Piophilidae The Piophilidae are a family of "true flies", in the order Diptera. The so-called cheese flies are the best-known members, but most species of the Piophilidae are scavengers in animal products, carrion, and fungi. They may accordingly be impo ...

— skippers *

Platystomatidae The Platystomatidae (signal flies) are a distinctive family of flies (Diptera) in the superfamily Tephritoidea. Signal flies are worldwide in distribution, found in all the biogeographic realms, but predominate in the tropics. It is one of the ...

— signal flies *

Pyrgotidae The Pyrgotidae are an unusual family of flies (Diptera), one of only two families of Cyclorrhapha that lack ocelli. Most species are "picture-winged" (i.e., have patterns of bands or spots on the wings), as is typical among the Tephritoidea, but ...

Richardiidae The Richardiidae are a family (biology), family of Fly, Diptera in the Taxonomic rank, superfamily Tephritoidea. This small family consists of just over 30 genera and 175 species. Almost all species are neotropical. Generally, the biology of th ...

Tephritidae The Tephritidae are one of two fly families referred to as fruit flies, the other family being the Drosophilidae. The family Tephritidae does not include the biological model organisms of the genus ''Drosophila'' (in the family Drosophilidae), w ...

— fruit flies *

Ulidiidae The Ulidiidae (formerly Otitidae) or picture-winged flies are a large and diverse cosmopolitan family of flies (Diptera), and as in related families, most species are herbivorous or detritivorous. They are often known as picture-winged flies, alo ...

(Otitidae) — picture-winged flies The

Tachiniscinae The Tachiniscinae are a subfamily of the fruit fly family Tephritidae. They are treated by some authorities as a separate family, Tachiniscidae. An undetermined species of the genus ''Tachiniscidia'' has been reared from Saturniidae caterpillars ...

, formerly ranked as the family Tachiniscidae, are now included in the Tephritidae.

Description

Tephritoidea are generally rather hairy flies with

setae In biology, setae (singular seta ; from the Latin word for "bristle") are any of a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms. Animal setae Protostomes Annelid setae are stiff bristles present on the body. Th ...

weakly differentiated. They have the following synapomorphies: male

tergum A ''tergum'' (Latin for "the back"; plural ''terga'', associated adjective tergal) is the Anatomical terms of location#Dorsal and ventral, dorsal ('upper') portion of an arthropod segment other than the head. The Anatomical terms of location#Ante ...

6 strongly reduced or absent; surstylus or medial surstylus with toothlike prensisetae (in Piophilidae only in one genus); female sterna 4-6 with anterior rodlike apodemes; female tergosternum 7 consisting of two portions, the anterior forming a tubular

oviscape The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects, for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typicall ...

and the posterior consisting of two pairs of longitudinal taeniae. In most Tephritoidea, the anal cell of a wing has a characteristic shape: the anal crossvein is indented while the cell's outer posterior angle is produced into an acute lobe. The exceptions to this rule are Platystomatidae and some Tephritidae, Ulidiidae (=Otitidae), and Pyrgotidae. Many tephritoid families have spots or patterns on their wings. These are Pallopteridae, Platystomatidae, Pyrgotidae, Richardiidae, Tephritidae and Ulidiidae.

Ecology

Tephritoidea includes plant pests in the families Tephritidae, Lonchaeidae and Ulidiidae. In these pest species, adult females lay their eggs on plant tissues, which hatch into larvae that begin feeding. However, Tephritoidea also includes

parasitoids In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasi ...

(Ctenostylidae, Pyrgotidae and the tephritid subfamily

) and saprophages that feed on decaying plants (subfamily

Phytalmiinae The Phytalmiinae are a subfamily of tephritid fruit flies. Systematics The Phytalmiinae are grouped into four tribes The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwi ...

and some Lonchaeidae).

Phylogeny

Tephritoidea is a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

superfamily that can be divided into two also-monophyletic groups: the Piophilidae Family Group (Pallopteridae, Circumphallidae, Lonchaeidae, Piophilidae and Eurygnathomyiidae) and the Tephritidae Family Group (Richardiidae, Ulidiidae, Platystomatidae, Tephritidae, Ctenostylidae and Pyrgotidae).

Evolution

The first Tephritoidea are believed to have evolved in the mid-

Paleocene The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), E ...

, approximately 59 million years ago.

References

External links

* *The Diptera Site
Fruit Fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) Phylogeny
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1093493 Diptera superfamilies