Bactrocera (Zeugodacus) zahadi Mahmood, 1999

Drew, R. A. I., Romig, M. C. & Dorji, C., 2007, Records Of Dacine Fruit Flies And New Species Of Dacus (Diptera: Tephritidae) In Bhutan, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 55 (1), pp. 1-21 : 13

Bactrocera (Zeugodacus) zahadi Mahmood

Bactrocera (Zeugodacus) zahadi Mahmood, 1999: 232 (holotype male in BMNH); Drew & Raghu, 2002: 350.

Material examined. – BHUTAN: 1 male (12 Apr.2000) , 1 male (5 Oct.2000), Rimchu 1, coll. C. Dorji; 1 male, Tsirang, Damphu Orchard , 20 Apr.2000 ; 1 male, Suntalay , 28 Jun.2000 , coll. S. Wangdi. All specimens attracted to cue lure. Specimens in NPPC and QDPI .

Diagnosis. – A medium sized species; face fulvous with a pair of large irregularly oval black spots; postpronotal lobes and notopleura yellow; scutum black with areas of red-brown; lateral and medial postsutural vittae present; small yellow spot anterior to mesonotal suture; mesopleural stripe just slightly wider than notopleuron dorsally; scutellum entirely yellow; wing with a narrow fuscous costal band expanding into a tau - like spot in apex of wing, a broad fuscous cubital streak; cells bc and c colourless; microtrichia in outer corner of cell c only; legs with femora fulvous except for subapical dark fuscous spots on fore and mid femora and dark fuscous around apical 1/4 of hind femora; abdominal terga III-V fulvous with a ‘T’ pattern consisting of a narrow transverse black band across anterior margin of tergum III and a moderately broad medial longitudinal black band over all three terga, large anterolateral black corners on terga IV and V.

Attractant. – Cue lure.

Distribution. – Southern Sri Lanka, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Bhutan.

Hosts. – No known record.

Remarks. – Bactrocera (Zeugodacus) zahadi Mahmood is extremely close to Bactrocera (Zeugodacus) tau (Walker) and may be a synonym of the latter. After studying large numbers of B. tau from across southeast Asia, it is clear that the lateral dark colour patterns on abdominal terga IV and V vary from small dark anterolateral corners to broad lateral longitudinal dark bands over both terga. Also, the femora colour varies from entirely fulvous to fulvous with preapical dark spots on some or all femora. One sound characteristic of B. tau is that it possesses a large keel shaped supernumerary lobe in the male wing which also is present in the holotype of B. zahadi . No good characters can be found to separate B. tau and B. zahadi . It is not a pest species.