Weather Parametric Impactions and Relative Abundance of Tephritid Fruit Flies associated with Cucumber

Fruit fly (B.cucurbitae) and red pumpkin beetle (A. foveicollis) are the important insect
pests inflicting damage on cucumber and other cucurbitaceous crops and commonly known as
symbol of yield losses.The results showed that during 2021and 2022 summer season, highest level
of fruit infestation by fruit fly was observed on 25 th July, 2021 and 8 th August 2022 with 46.86 and
41.3 per cent fruit infestation, respectively. The correlation studies on fruit fly incidence revealed
that there was a significant positive correlation in respect of mean no. of eggs, mean no. of maggots
and per cent fruit infestation with maximum and minimum temperature respectively, during both
the consecutive years of 2021 & 2022. The data on relative abundance of different insects of
cucumber during 2021and 2022 revealed that the fruit fly species, Bactrocera dorsalis (62.27%)
was the highest followed by B. tau (15.68%), B. cucurbitae (10.73%), Dacus longicornis (2.47%),
Coccinella transversalis (2.45%), Aulacophora foveicollis (2.20%), Micrapsis discolor (1.56%), A.
frontalis (1.16%), and Coccinella septumapunctata (1.08%). During 2021 and 2022, the Simpson-
Index diversity showed highest value for fruit fly (0.97 and 0.94) followed by predacious
coccinellid beetles (0.67 and 0.71) and red pumpkin beetle (0.55 and 0.64), respectively. Whereas,
Shannon-Wiener index diversity (H’) during 2021 and 2022 observed highest in fruit fly (1.65 and
1.85) followed by predacious coccinellid beetles (1.15 and 1.05) and pumpkin beetle (0.68 and
0.85), respectively.