Written by Jill B.
At a recent Jefferson County WSU plant clinic, a client brought in fruit with tiny worms in them. The fruits were blackberry, strawberry and cherry. The plant clinicians suspected Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD).
SWD is a soft fruit pest and has been spotted around the PNW since 2009
Since the larvae stage of the SWD is difficult to identify, the plant clinicians asked the client to set up a trap to collect the adults. The following link shows the best ways to trap and how to identify adults: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/
Once the pest is positively identified, the following links will be sent to the client for control and further information:
http://www.mountvernon.wsu.
2 were SWDs ( one male and one female) and the third some kind of a tiny bee- link insect with a thick waist and striped abdomen. The red eyes were hard to observe, but the spot on the wing tip of the male was very obvious through a 10x hand lens. Vinegar turned out to be not the best preservative. It was interesting in that the larvae were almost translucent and had black mouth parts. They were tiny and very fast moving making them hard to see in the scope. We had better luck with a 10x hand lens.We were fairly certain that we had SWD from the larvae and read a caution to ID with adults only as larvae can be tricky until you have seen many.