| Adult Tephritidae, especially of the genus Anastrepha (Schiner, 1868), have been observed to feed on a wide variety of natural diets. The fruit on which they feed, in general, are rich in sugar content, chiefly glucose, frutose and sucrose, which are also the sugars that those insects utilise better. Neither the behavioural mechanisms, nor the physiological ones, that control food selection by insects, are well known. Because some of those aspects are not known for the species Anastrepha obliqua (Macquart, 1835) either, and in order to understand their biology better, three experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, it was checked whether there was a difference in metabolic profit by those insects, when fed the carbohydrates more frequently found... |
