Apple Maggot in Oregon: A Possible New Threat to the Northwest Apple Industry

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The apple maggot, Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh), is a serious pest of apples in the northeastern United States and adjacent portions of southeastern Canada. Indigenous to this region, it is thought to have originally used native hawthorne (Crataegus spp.) berries for larval development, undergoing a host transference to Malus after its introduction into the New England area (Dean and Chapman 1973). Bush (1966) reports that this host shift was relatively recent, since this species was first described in 1867 (Walsh 1867), ca. 200 years after the apple was brought to our country from Europe. Host diversification has continued, and R. pomonella is currently known to infest a number of introduced rosaceous plants, including cultivated plum in Florida (Herrick 1920), sour cherry in Door County, Wis., and a small area in northwestern Michigan (Shervis et al. 1970), and recently, rose hips in southern New England (Prokopy and Berlocher 1980). Adult flies have also been reared from apricot (Lienk 1970) and pear (Prokopy and Bush 1972), although permanent populations were never established in these fruits. Apple and hawthorne infesting races are now generally distributed over the eastern half of the continent, extending from New York south to Florida and west to North Dakota and eastern Texas. Another disjunct population is known to occur in the highlands of central Mexico. The apple race does not extend as far north as the hawthorne race. Southward it follows the Appalachian Mountains into northern Georgia. No apple infesting forms are known from the remaining tier of southern states (Bush 1969).

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: