D. busckii Coquillet 1901

Last update: 21 September, 2002

Picture of female Drosophila busckii by
Hilary Burn

A widely distributed and cosmopolitan species. In Britain it lives mainly indoors and has been recorded from chicken-coops, greenhouses, and fruit stores. In the survey carried out in southern England by Dyson-Hudson (1954), 72% of all specimens collected were taken in or around farms. Shaw (1968) records adults, larvae, and pupae on the open face of a covered pit of pea-silage, along with D. hydei. Several workers have found it breeding in large numbers among decaying plant matter and there is a record of 2 adult flies having been reared from cow-dung (Laurence, 1953). Workers in Switzerland observed large numbers of adults emerging from mushrooms, mainly species of Russula. It seems to be most abundant in Britain late in the year, particularly in August.

Prof. B. Shorrocks

Bibliography
Dyson-Hudson, V.R.D. 1954 The taxonomy and ecology of the British species of Drosophila. D.Phil. thesis (deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in the library of the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Oxford University). Back

Laurence, B.R. 1953 Some Diptera bred from cow dung. Entomologists' Monthly Magazine. Back

Shaw, M.W. 1968 Drosophila species (Dipt. Drosophilidae) associated with pea silage. Entomologists' Monthly Magazine. Back