Atherigona
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Diptera
- Family: Muscidae
- Genus: Atherigona
Visual Description
Members of the genus Atherigona are small flies. Observations of Atherigona reversura (Bermudagrass stem maggot) specimens from the TreeOfLife-200M dataset reveal a body structure typical of many muscid flies, characterized by a distinct head with large compound eyes, a thorax, and an abdomen.[1] The coloration is generally muted, often featuring shades of grey, brown, or yellowish-brown, which provides camouflage in their natural environments.[1]
Ecology and Economic Importance
The genus Atherigona includes several species that are known as agricultural pests. A notable example is Atherigona soccata, commonly known as the sorghum shoot fly, which is a major constraint in sorghum production.[2]
Research into host plant resistance has identified various morphological traits in sorghum, such as leaf glossiness, plant vigor, leafsheath pigmentation, and the presence of trichomes, that correlate with resistance or susceptibility to A. soccata. The resistance to this pest is often season-specific and appears to be controlled by genes of an additive nature, making pedigree breeding a viable strategy for developing resistant, high-yielding cultivars.
Another species, Atherigona reversura, is known as the Bermudagrass stem maggot.[3]
Gallery
References
- 1 2 3 Dataset view for Animalia / Arthropoda / Insecta / Diptera / Muscidae / Atherigona constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Riyazaddin Mohammed; Rajendra S. Munghate; Ashok Kumar Are; Kavi Kishor B. Polavarapu; Belum V.S. Reddy; H. C. Sharma. Components of resistance to sorghum shoot fly, Atherigona soccata. Euphytica. 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-015-1566-1.
- ↑ Atherigona. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherigona. Accessed 2026-07-14.