Queensland fruit fly
The Queensland fruit fly is a small reddish brown fly with yellow markings. It looks a bit like a little wasp, but it cannot sting. When it walks, it holds its wings flat and flicks them in a special way.
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Fun facts
The maggots eat their way to the middle of the fruit, which makes it rot and fall off the tree.
It is the most costly fruit pest in Australia.
It goes for almost every kind of fruit, from apples to mangoes, but it leaves pineapples alone.
It is busy during the day but finds a mate at night.
A grown-up fly can live for a year or even longer.
Most asked questions about Queensland fruit fly
?What does the Queensland fruit fly eat?
Its maggots eat the inside of fruit like apples, peaches, citrus and mangoes.
?Is the Queensland fruit fly a wasp?
No. It only looks a bit like a wasp. It is a fly and cannot sting.
?How big is the Queensland fruit fly?
It is about 5 to 8 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bactrocera tryoni
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Tephritidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Tephritidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Bactrocera tryoni (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by James Niland. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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