A fruit fly that looked like a wasp, River Esplanade, Bandar Sri Indah, 2014

One fly on a large tree beside the Babanga Stream, 23 November 2014; photographed the next morning on 2 mm graph paper; about 16 mm long; tribe Adramini, genus not determined

The fly from above on 2 mm graph paper: large red eyes, a shiny black thorax with cream-yellow stripes and a cream scutellum, and folded wings with dark tips and dark cross-bands. — 08:19:47, from above on 2 mm graph paper.

The fly on graph paper with its wings spread: each wing clear with a dark tip, a dark cross-band and a dark streak along the hind edge; orange abdomen, long orange legs with dark ends. — 08:28:38, wings spread, on 2 mm graph paper.

Close-up of the head and thorax from above on light wood: two large red eyes, very short antennae, and a shiny black thorax with a cream central stripe and cream side marks. — 08:22:15, head and thorax: short antennae.

The fly on a blue plastic surface, seen from the side and above: orange abdomen under the banded wings, long thin legs. — 08:23:16, orange abdomen under the wings.

All four photos cropped and reduced from the photographer's files; nothing else changed. No flash.

Record — River Esplanade, 2014

Found	Sunday 23 November 2014
Place	River Esplanade, Bandar Sri Indah, Tawau, Sabah, beside the Babanga Stream
Substrate	Wandering on a large tree, the same tree as a tree trunk spider and a Bavia jumping spider that day
Number	One
Size	About 16 mm, front of the head to the end of the abdomen (8 squares), and 20–22 mm to the wing tips (10–11 squares), on 2 mm graph paper
Photographed	Monday 24 November 2014, 08:19–08:37, in early sunlight behind the woodworking building at the photographer's office; kept overnight in a plastic bag
Cameras	Canon PowerShot A480 (25 frames) and Canon IXUS 145 (51 frames); flash on a few IXUS frames only
Afterwards	Released after photography
Observer	Wong Fook Yee
iNaturalist	observation 408059698

The day

At noon, after photographing the tree trunk spider, it started to rain, so the photographer went for lunch at the Sri Indah restaurant. After lunch the sky cleared and the sun came out, and he went back to the River Esplanade to photograph the Bavia spider.

His spider pages date that day's spiders: the long-spinnered bark spider Hersilia deelemanae at 12:41 and 1:03 pm, and Bavia sp. ESPLANADE at 3:33 pm. The time the fly was caught was not recorded.

Identification

Order Diptera (flies) · Family Tephritidae (fruit flies) · Subfamily Trypetinae · Tribe Adramini · genus and species not determined.

One pair of wings, very short antennae and large red eyes: a fly, although it was taken for a wasp in the field.
Thorax shiny black with cream-yellow stripes and side marks; scutellum cream.
Abdomen orange; legs long, orange, darker towards the ends.
Wings clear, each with a dark tip, a dark cross-band and dark streaks.

Tribe Adramini was given by identifiers on iNaturalist. It is one of the tribes of the subfamily Trypetinae of the fruit flies, with about 26 genera. Larvae of some species are recorded in seeds, for example in tea seeds and in the pods of Albizia; nothing is known of this fly's larva. Members of the tribe are recorded from Sabah.

What would move it to a genus: sharp views of the side of the thorax and of one wing laid flat, showing the full band pattern and veins.

The black-and-yellow pattern and banded wings make it look like a wasp, but it is not one of the wasps that hunt spiders.

Related: Flies of Borneo · One pair of wings · River Esplanade of Bandar Sri Indah · Straight-snouted weevil, same esplanade, June 2014
Photographs © Wong Fook Yee. Place, date found, behaviour, the paper ruling and the story of the day are the photographer's own; photo times from the cameras; size measured on the photographs; tribe from iNaturalist. Sources for the tribe: Wikipedia, "Trypetinae" and "Adrama"; Hancock & Drew, "New species and records of Asian Trypetinae", Raffles Bulletin of Zoology; DELTA, Fruit flies of Asia (Adrama determinata, recorded from Sabah). Record page written 13 October 2026.