Tephritidae

Harym, Younes El & Korneyev, Valery, 2023, New additions to the fauna of the superfamily Tephritoidea (Diptera) of Morocco, Zootaxa 5360 (4), pp. 487-514 : 501

Family Tephritidae

The majority of Tephritidae are phytophagous, feeding on fruits, stems, leaves or flowers of several plant families ( Hancock et al. 2021). Dacinae occur predominantly in palaeotropics, with the exception of species spread by humans. Many species of the subfamily Tephritinae breed in flower heads, although many form galls in stems, roots or flowers of Asteraceae , Lamiaceae , Acanthaceae or some other plant families ( White & Elson-Harris 1992).

Actually, 121 species are known from North Africa and distributed in three subfamilies ( El-Hawagry 2017; El Harym & Belqat 2017; El Harym et al. 2022), and four species are newly recorded in the present paper. The Dacinae are represented by 12 species and 5 genera of the tribes Ceratitidini (2 genera and 2 species) and Dacini (2 genera and 9 species). The Tephritinae is the richest subfamily present, with 102 species belonging to seven tribes having been recorded: Tephritini (14 genera, 55 species), Terelliini (3 genera, 14 species), Noeetini (2 genera, 2 species), Tephrellini (6 genera, 8 species), Myopitini (2 genera, 16 species), Dithrycini (1 genus, 6 species), Schistopterini (1 genus, 1 species). The Trypetinae is poorly represented by only four genera and seven species. In Morocco, the total number of species known is 70, these species belong to 3 subfamilies, 10 tribes and 30 genera: Dacinae (2 tribes, 4 genera and 5 species), Tephritinae (6 tribes, 23 genera and 61 species) and Trypetinae (2 tribes, 3 genera and 4 species) ( El Harym et al. 2022).