Q-Tephrikey, an interactive tool for the identification of regulated fruit fly pests in the European Union

Abstract

The European Union (EU) regulation for fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) was modified in 2022, and the broad ‘non-European Tephritidae’ group was replaced by a list of 75 regulated taxa (66 species and nine genera). The National Reference Laboratories in the EU must now be able to identify all of them, whatever the development stage, in order to carry out official surveillance. To help laboratories, the European Union Reference Laboratory for Insects and Mites developed an interactive and multi-entry online key called Q-Tephrikey. The key is now freely available on the XPer3 website. It covers a total of 113 tephritid taxa, encompassing the regulated ones, 12 species listed as non-regulated exceptions and the species that have been intercepted in Europe. The taxa are encoded in two morphological matrices for adults and for larvae. This latter one is less extensive because only 38 species among the 113 taxa are described at the larval stage. To help the diagnosticians, the morphological matrices are accompanied by a pathway matrix encoded for the distributions and host ranges of each taxon. We present here the detailed content and functioning of Q-Tephrikey, and discuss its strengths and weaknesses in terms of its objectives. The key is available at https://q-tephrikey.identificationkey.org/mkey.html.