Fruit flies prove complex species

Insect and tropical plant ecosystems are more colourful and complex than previously suspected.

Researchers found that plants sampled from a wide swathe of Latin America hosted a plethora of fruit fly species.

By comparing their DNA, the scientists identified 52 different species from a total of 24 types of plant.

Not only did different flies specialise in different plants, but many confined themselves to particular parts of the same plant.

Almost all the fly species fed only on seeds or flowers, not both, and some ate only male or female flowers.

One plant species supported at least 13 different types of fruit fly.

In many cases the flies looked identical and could not be distinguished without DNA analysis.

Professor Marty Condon, from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, US, and colleagues reared more than 2,500 flies from the host plants.

Flowers and seeds were collected from an area stretching from Mexico to southern Bolivia, bridging the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

"We typically found one or more fly species specific to female flowers and multiple specialists on male flowers," the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

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