Diagnosis

Morphological – adult

Medium sized species. Features include:

• small fuscous to black facial spots present
• postpronotal lobes and notopleura yellow
• scutum orange-brown without dark markings, mesopleural stripe reaching almost to anterior npl. seta, lateral postsutural vittae beginning anterior to mesonotal suture, broad medial postsutural vitta present, scutellum yellow
• wing with a narrow fuscous costal band and anal streak, cells bc and c pale fulvous (cell c slightly paler than cell bc), microtrichia in outer corner of cell c only
• abdominal terga I and II orange-brown, terga III-V fulvous except for two broad lateral longitudinal orange-brown bands over all three terga and a narrow medial longitudinal band which is orange-brown on tergum III and orange-brown to dark fuscous on tergum IV and V (this band is broader on tergum V)
• posterior lobe of male surstylus long
• female with aculeus tip blunt trilobed (Drew 1989; pers. comm. Drew 2010).

Morphological – larvae

See White and Elson-Harris 1992 p. 172

Molecular

Host Range

Polyphagous but primarily a pest of Cucurbitaceae. Recorded from 40 hosts in 15 families including the families Caricaceae, Curcurbitaceae, Myrtaceae, Passifloraceae, and Solanaceae, although many recorded hosts are single records and may require confirmation.

Major commercial hosts include papaya, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, zucchini, guada bean, passionfruit and tomato (Hancock et al. 2000).

Major commercial hosts:

• Carica papaya (papaw)
• Passiflora edulis (passionfruit)
• Cucumis sativus (cucumber)
• Solanum lycopersicum (tomato)
• Cucurbita moschata (pumpkin)
• Trichosanthes anguinea (guada bean)
• Cucurbita pepo (squash and zucchini)

Distribution

Australia: Northern Territory, Queensland including Torres Strait islands, northeast New South Wales (Smith et al. 1988, Hancock et al. 2000).

Similar species

Zeugodacus cucumis is a pale orange-brown species with medial and lateral postsutural vittae present, a yellow scutellum, prsc. and sa. setae absent, 4 sc. seta present and a small elongate-oval black spot centrally on tergum V (Drew 1989).

It appears similar to the exotic B. atrisetosa from PNG but lacks supra-alar and pre-scutellar bristles.

Pest Status

• Native
• Major pest of cucurbits in Queensland.

Attractant/Lure

No known attraction to male lures, although sporadically trapped at cue-lure. Cucumber volatile blend was found to generally be more attractive to both sexes than orange-ammonia or protein traps (Ceratrap) (Royer et al. 2014).