Drosophila pallidifrons, Wheeler, 1969

Mcevey, Shane F. & Polak, Michal, 2021, Drosophilidae (Diptera) of the Cook Islands, Records of the Australian Museum (Rec. Aust. Mus.) 73 (5), pp. 153-170 : 160

Drosophila pallidifrons

Wheeler, in Wilson et al., 1969

In New Guinea, northeastern Australia and western TSP two species morphologically similar to D. sulfurigaster have been reported: D. pallidifrons Wheeler, 1969 (type locality Ponape, Micronesia) with no orbital pruinescence, first detected in Australia by us at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory and established there as live cultures by Schiffer in, 2018, and D. niveifrons Okada & Carson, 1982 (type locality Lae, Papua New Guinea) with full-frontal pruinescence, first detected in Torres Strait ( McEvey, 1982), then in Iron Range ( McEvey & Bock, 1982) and then at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory (by us initially and later with Schiffer, unpublished). Both differ from D. sulfurigaster which is distinct in having only orbital pruinescence in males. Molecular geneticists are persuaded that there may be other, more cryptic, species in New Guinea and surrounding islands. Drosophila pallidifrons was collected in low frequency with the more abundant D. sulfurigaster on Aitutaki and Rarotonga ( Table 3). These records expand the known distribution of the species from Ponape, throughout New Guinea (e.g., Vogelkop AM K.580956, Tabubil K.355375–76, and Wau K.272119), northern Australia to New Caledonia (e.g., Mont Koghis AM K.355023–30 coll. 1975 by P.A. Parsons and K.355381–91 coll. 2000 by the authors with Barker and Starmer; see also Tsacas & Chassagnard, 1988) and now also to the Cook Islands.