Abstract

Tephritidae (fruit flies) is one of the most important Diptera families and includes more than 200 pest species. Some species in this family have a high level of similarity and are difficult to distinguish morphologically. In this study, landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis using wing images was performed on three members of the Terellia (sensu stricto) serratulae group in order to distinguish Terellia fuscicornis (Loew, 1844), Terellia nigripalpis Hendel, 1927, and Terellia serratulae (L., 1758). Specimens of the T. fuscicornis , T. nigripalpis and T. serratulae used in the study were collected from three provinces (İzmir, Kahramanmaraş and Adıyaman) of Turkey between 2016 and 2018. The geometric morphometric analysis of the wings, using fifteen landmarks, indicated significant differences in the wing shapes of each species, separating them successfully into distinct groups. CVA (canonical variate analysis) results based on the wing shapes strongly support the existence of taxonomically three different species. The reidentification accuracies were high, and wing shape discriminated three species of Terellia with over 87% accuracy. Finally, we concluded that landmark-based geometric morphometric analysis could be a powerful tool to identify Terellia spp.

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