Meghalaya: New Fruit Fly Species Discovered in Ri-Bhoi

Scientists have described two new species of fruit flies belonging to the genus Euphranta from ecologically sensitive regions of India, underscoring the country’s rich and still underexplored insect diversity.

Euphranta undulata was collected from the bamboo forests around Umiam in Ri-Bhoi district, Meghalaya (Northeast India), while Euphranta goniothalami was found on the rare and endemic shrub Goniothalamus keralensis at Valara in Kerala’s Idukki district, part of the globally recognised Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot.

The discoveries are the result of an inter-institutional research project titled “Faunistic studies on bamboo-shoot fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) of Western Ghats and Northeast India”, funded by DST-ANRF-ARG. The work was led by Dr K.J. David, Senior Scientist at ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR), Bengaluru, and Dr N. Kennedy, Assistant Professor at the College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Sciences, Central Agricultural University (Imphal), Umiam.

Taxonomic confirmation was provided by internationally renowned tephritid expert Dr David Lawrence Hancock (Retired Entomological Consultancy, Cairns, Australia).

The findings have been published in the prestigious Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift (DEZ), one of the world’s oldest journals in systematic entomology (Volume 72, Issue 2, 2025, pp. 367–375; DOI: 10.3897/dez.72.165084).

This is the latest success for the research duo: in 2024, Dr David, Dr Kennedy and their collaborators already described four new species of the genus Zeugodacus Hendel and reported several new country records of dacine fruit flies from India.

The authors expressed gratitude to Prof. Pranab Dutta, Chairman, School of Crop Protection, and Prof. D. Thakuria, Dean, CPGS-AS, CAU (Imphal), Umiam, for their sustained guidance and institutional support.

These new additions highlight the importance of continued faunistic surveys in India’s bamboo ecosystems and the Western Ghats, regions that remain critical for discovering species of both ecological and potential agricultural significance.