Rayed Thistle Fly Tephritis cometa Loew (Diptera: Tephritidae) a new record to India

: Tephritis cometa Loew, 1840, known to infest field thistle or Canada thistle or creeping thistle Cirsium arvense, a medicinal plant used as a tonic and to treat disease such as diarrhea and tuberculosis; it is diuretic. Cirsium arvense is a perennial flowering plant belonging to the family Asteraceae and is native to Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. We report the first record of Tephritis cometa Loew, 1840 in southern Asia from Kashmir, India. The identified specimen of Tephritis cometa, commonly known as Rayed Thistle Fly was found on Cirsium arvense, a grass (Asteraceae) at the site, SKU2 in district Kulgam. However, the actual host plant is unknown. This paper includes morphological studies, key identification, diagnosis, and its distribution.

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online); ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 2. Please copy paste these two abstracts one in English and another in Urdu language Abstract: Tephritis cometa Loew, 1840, known to infest field thistle or Canada thistle or creeping thistle Cirsium arvense, a medicinal plant used as a tonic and to treat diseases such as diarrhea and tuberculosis; it is diuretic. Cirsium arvense is a perennial flowering plant belonging to the family Asteraceae and is native to Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. We report the first record of Tephritis cometa Loew, 1840 in southern Asia from Kashmir, India. The identified specimen of Tephritis cometa, commonly known as Rayed Thistle Fly was found on Cirsium arvense, a grass (Asteraceae) at the site, SKU2 in district Kulgam. However, the actual host plant is unknown. This paper includes morphological studies, key identification, diagnosis, and its distribution.

INTRODUCTION
There are roughly 4,500 species of true fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae), and about 100 of them are pests of commercially farmed fruits (Norrbom et al. 1999;Korneyev & Dilberk 2000). Tephritids are known to traverse enormous distances and are invasive in all continents (Duyck et al. 2004). These notorious insects are phytophagous, and some of them can be harmful pests or employed as weed-controlling bioagents (White & Elson-Harris 1992). The majority of them are members of a few sizable genera, such as Bactrocera and Dacus, which are widespread throughout zoogeographic regions.
Tephritis Latreille is the third largest genus in the Tephritinae and the sixth largest genus in the Tephritidae with roughly 170 species (Norrbom et al. 1999;Korneyev & Dirlbek 2000). The majority of Tephritis species consume various species of the same genus and are commonly referred to as stenophagous or monophagous (Korneyev 2016). Some characteristic features such as two dark frontal setae; dorso-central setae located on or just posterior to transverse suture; two orbital setae, anterior setae acuminate and dark (brown or blackish), posterior setae typically lanceolate and pale (whitish or yellowish; in 2 species brown or black); flat scutellum with two sets of setae, with apical setae that are 0.5-0.6 times longer than basal setae; wing pattern varies greatly between species, typically reticulate with a well-developed apical fork, but can also be stellate or even banded (Freidberg & Kugler 1989;Merz 1994) set Tephritis apart from the other genera in the subfamily Tephritinae. Korneyev (2013), described eleven species of the genus Tephritis, mostly from the Palaearctic Middle East, with an unusual banded wing pattern with four new records: Tephritis afrostriata, T. cameo, T. gladius, and T. ochroptera. Korneyev & Evstigneev (2019), redescribed six species from western Palaearctic region in which T. conura (Loew, 1844), T. hendeliana Hering, 1944, andT. hyoscyami (Linnaeus, 1758) Hering, 1944(Evstigneev & Glukhova 2022. T. cometa Loew, (1840), belongs to the tribe Tephritini, family Tephritidae and has been identified as a frequent pest of Cirsium arvense, C. vulgare, and C. lappaceum. Typically, the larvae of T. cometa eat the flowers of Cirsium species, while some species induce the formation of galls in roots or stems of Asteraceae (Freidberg 1984;Merz 1994). The records of T. cometa for the first time were reported from Flanders and Belgium (Nobby 2001), Foum El Gherza Dam, a wet land habitat in Biskar region (Deghivhe-Diab et al. 2021), Iran (Namin et al. 2010), Turkey (Kutuk 2006;Kutuk & Katranci 2021), and Europe, Israel, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mangolia, & China (Norrbom et al. 1999).
India is located at the intersection of the Afrotropical, Indo-Malayan, and Paleo-Arctic realms and, therefore, possesses characteristic elements from all three. The combination of these three diverse realms gives the nation a rich and distinctive biological variety, due to which, India is one among world's 12 megadiverse nations (Sinha et al. 2010). The Kashmir Himalaya is a part of the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot that has a serious threat of invasion by foreign insect species. Despite harmful impacts of these insect species on native biodiversity and economic and ecological systems of the region, a field-based intensive sampling study for management of fruit fly with pheromone application technology (PAT) is lacking, which merits urgent research attention. Therefore, it is necessary to recognise the fruit flies that can severely harm a variety of horticultural, agricultural and other plant species. Furthermore, the majority of Tephritis species infest the flowerheads and, in certain cases, the stems of Asteraceae hosts, which may lead to the development of galls (Freidberg 1984). As a result, our objective is to investigate pheromone application technology for the management of all known and undiscovered fruit flies that have travelled thousands of miles to establish in the Kashmir Himalaya.

Survey and trap installation
Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent where apricots are grown on 2,880 ha, cherry on 2,713 ha, plum on 1,427 ha and peach on 714 ha of land (Daily Hindustan Times 5 August 2022). In Kashmir Valley's fruit and vegetable production zones, a total of 30 sites, three from each district, were chosen for survey through 2019-2021 (Image 1). A total of 94 para-pheromone-filled traps were placed over all the selected areas to catch fruit flies. All the implanted traps were constructed using simple cold drink bottles, which contained methyl eugenol inside hanging rubber

Collection and identification
All the installed traps were checked and refreshed fortnightly. The voucher specimens were deposited at the Zoology Museum, University of Kashmir. For identification, Hering (1944), Freidberg & Kugler (1989), and Merz (1994) were consulted and further confirmation by Prof. Drew, director, ICMF, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.

Morphological studies
The present work is totally based on morphological studies following Kutuk (2006) al. (2015), and Gharajedaghi et al. (2011a). Studied morphological characters show differences in wing patterns among different species and are presented in the plate (Image 2). Photographs of wing and habitus were taken using a Leica S9D Stereo zoom microscope at the Entomology Research Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University of Kashmir.

RESULTS
According to the results of our morphological study, Tephritis cometa has now crossed into India's territory and may be a severe threat to several grass plants, particularly the country's Cirsium spp.

Rayees.
Diagnosis: A small fly of about 5-6 mm with distinctively patterned wings. Ocellus with star shaped mark and five ocellar and frontal setae. Frons about 1.8 times as long as eye width, third segment of antenna about 1.7 times as long as wide: apical fork of wing present; branches of apical fork widen distinctly towards wing margin; two or more hyaline areas present in cell m; basal half of wing mainly hyaline; cell r1 with small subapical hyaline spot; branches of apical fork uniformly narrow along their entire length; hyaline spot of cell r 2+3 continuous with basal indentation of cell r1 (usually 3 hyaline spots), (Image 2). The species is collected along with Bactrocera spp. in the MacPhail pheromone trap containing methyl eugenol and SPLAT gel.
Remarks: The genus Tephritis has general characteristics making it easily identifiable from other Tephritid fruit flies due to the presence of long and thick inner vertical setae.
Head: The head is predominantly yellow to brown; yellowish on the occiput and ocellar tubercle; brown anterior orbital setae; white postorbital setae; first flagellomere yellow; basal half on arista yellow; palpus mostly yellow, brownish at apex; wide fronto-facial angle.

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Thorax: The majority of the setae are brown and acuminate; setulae are numerous usually in pairs on the margin of the scutellum; the basal scutellar seta are longer than the apical scutellar seta; yellow halter; the ground colour is often black; the microtrichia are grey; the scutellum is shiny and silvery.
Legs: Numerous yellow setulae; tarsi usually brown. Wing: Branches of apical fork widen distinctly towards wing margin; two or more hyaline areas present in cell m; basal half of wing mainly hyaline; cell r 1 with small subapical hyaline spot; branches of apical fork uniformly narrow along their entire length; hyaline spot of cell r 2+3 continuous with basal indentation of cell r1.
Abdomen: Ground colour usually black; microtrichia numerous and shiny.
India status: Reported for the first time in India.  www.threatenedtaxa.org The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned. JoTT allows allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of articles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.