Database of the list for associations between host plants and fruit flies

Insects tend to feed on related hosts. Coevolution tends to be
dominated by interactions resulting from plant chemistry in defense
strategies, and evolution of secondary metabolisms being in response to
insect herbivory remains a classic explanation of
coevolution. The present study examines whether evolutionary constraints
existing in host associations of economically important fruit flies in the
species-rich tribe Dacini (Diptera: Tephritidae) and to
what extent these species have evolved specialized dietary patterns. We
found a strong effect of host phylogeny on associations on the 37 fruit
flies tested, although the fruit fly species feeding on
ripe commercially grown fruits that lost the toxic
compounds after long domestication are mostly
polyphagous. We assessed the phylogenetic signal of host breadth across
the fruit fly species, showing that the results were substantially
different depending on partition levels. Further, we
mapped main host family associations onto the fruit fly phylogeny
and Cucurbitaceae has been inferred as the most likely
ancestral host family for Dacini based on ancestral state reconstruction.