A Fruit Fly on a piece of Water Melon

These are also archived images, which I have not posted before, as I needed the time to review them, and try to work out what I had seen and photographed. To explain, these images were taken on a piece of Water Melon, on my bird feeder (when there were no birds in attendance, obviously. These images were taken on 12 April 2010.

I could tell that it was a Fly, (single pair of wings, not double wings; and prominent short, sharp antennae on the front of the face). That's what I look for, anyway, in trying to start working out insects.

1. So, "tick" Fly.
2. It was on a piece of fruit, so, I immediately suspect a "Fruit Fly".
   

Having lived most of my life in Canberra, (which is not really a Fruit Fly area) I am not familiar with Fruit Flies. They probably are in Canberra, they are not really problematic there.

So, I did a Google Image Search for "Fruit Fly + Australia". OK some likely looking things pop up there.
http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/quarantine/pests-diseases/plants-products/exotic_fruit_flies

Lets look for the "Melon Fly" - it seems to have the right shaped wings.
http://www.insectimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5311055
Melon Fly

The detailed description there seems to fit, But I am far from being an expert. "Number of pale whitish to yellow postsutural stripes three. Subscutellum uniformly brown."
Then the description of the wing venation comes into play: "Wings with crossvein r-m covered by short, diffuse infuscation, or covered by short, well-defined infuscation; crossvein dm-cu covered by a major crossband which reaches posterior margin of wing."


My photos are OK, but not really good enough for me to trace out the veins in the wings. All I can say is that the wing structure looks "similar" between my image and this linked image.

The AQIS (Quarantine) site says: "Melon fly (Bactrocera cucurbitae) mainly affects plants such as cucumbers, pumpkins, rockmelons, squash, watermelons, but also chillies, green beans, mangoes, papayas, tomatoes, citrus and stone fruits.

"It has a worldwide distribution including China, India, Hawaii, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan and Thailand. It is occasionally detected on islands in the Torres Strait but is not established in Australia."

I conclude that my fly on a Melon is in all probability not a Melon Fly, but something with the same sweet taste-buds.

Any Fruit Fly experts are welcome to offer advice on the ID of my Fruit Fly.

peonyden (at) bigpond (dot) com.