Eminent international fruit fly taxonomists of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium (MRAC) and the Natural History Museum, London, Engl and, have honored Dr Georg Goergen, Head of the Biodiversity Center of IITA in Bénin for his continuing assessment activities on the West African insect fauna. These have recently led to the discovery and description of a new species of fruit fly (Dacus) in Bénin and Togo.
Consequently, these international bodies of taxonomists have named the new species of fruit fly Dacus goergeni after Dr Goergen.
Dacus goergeni was discovered when roughly 10,000 fly specimens had been collected in about 2000 sampling events in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Bénin, and Nigeria and were thoroughly examined.
Dr Manuele Tamò, Insect Ecologist and Country Representative of IITA- Bénin, said the discovery was unexpected as the genus Dacus already consisted of 194 named species and the most recent Africa-wide revision of the group was dated only from 2006 with some amendments made in late 2009.
Dacus goergeni belongs to one of the three main African genera of fruit-attacking flies within the family Tephritidae. Several of these are of high economic importance, causing severe damage to fruits and vegetables and constitute a major constraint to commercial and subsistence farming in sub-Saharan Africa.
Fruit infestation on average can reach 20-40% and is considered the main problem impeding the production and export of quality (sub)tropical fruits throughout the continent.
IITA Director General, Dr Nteranya Sanginga, commended Dr Goergen, noting that the honor demonstrates the research excellence in IITA.
Dr Goergen joined the biological control program against the cassava mealybug at IITA, Ibadan in 1987, under the framework of a GTZ-sponsored fellowship, and completed his PhD in entomology at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, in 1992.
With financial support by the Austrian government, he was then appointed as a postdoctoral scientist at IITA, Cotonou, Bénin, where he gradually established an institutional taxonomic capacity for arthropods of agricultural importance with a focus on integrated pest management, habitat management, and the biological control of various important agricultural pests in tropical Africa.
As a senior entomologist, he provided biosystematics support to IITA and its collaborating scientific community and developed, over a 20-year timeframe, one of the largest insect reference collections in West Africa. Currently, he is in charge of an SDC-funded biological control project to control the newly introduced papaya mealybug in close collaboration with national partners from six countries in West and Central Africa.
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For more information, please contact: Andrea Gros, a.gros@cgiar.org or Godwin Atser, g.atser@cgiar.org .
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