ABSTRACT
Insects, being heterotrophs like all animals, require exogenous nutrients for both tissue construction and satisfaction of their energy requirements. This describes fruit fly dietary requirements and presents some thoughts about using nutritional information for more effective fruit fly control. Research on tephritid feeding and dietary requirements is very active since a number of fruit fly species are of great economic importance. All fruit fly feeding responses and decisions involve some underlying nutritional components by which the flies achieve and maintain an optimum "set of states" for maximal fitness in their specific environment. Feeding is a dynamic and active process with many feedback interactions, affecting and being affected by variables, such as movement, phagostimulation, ingestion, survival, and reproduction. Microbial leaf isolates, cultured from honeydew on which adult R. pomonella were feeding, produced volatiles that elicited olfactory responses in the flies. Determination of the normal microflora of an insect and its role in the insect's economy is a very difficult task.
