Adults are usually three or four millimeters long and yellowish to yellowish brown in color. The compound eyes are glossy and naked or covered with microhairs. Drosophilidae are frontal with three pairs of lateral frontal bristles, the lower pair away from the eye and pointing anteriorly, and the upper two pairs closer to the eye and pointing posteriorly. The posterior parietal bristles meet at the end, with one pair of unilocular bristles, one pair of inner and outer parietal bristles, and one or two moustaches. Beak shorter and curved.

The wing of Drosophilidae is transparent, sometimes mottled light or dark brown. It has two ragged folds in the anterior marginal vein, and the subanterior marginal vein is weak and incompletely reduced; the second basal chamber is united with the middle chamber or separated by a transverse vein. The abdomen of Drosophilidae is narrow, and the ovipositor of females is weakly ossified.

The eggs are small and oval, white, with 2-10 filaments or 2 membranous projections on the dorsal side. The larvae are light-colored, maggot-shaped, with both head and mouthparts degenerated, with the greater part of the head retracted into the thorax and the main part of the cephalopharyngeal bone, and exposed only by a sharp, thin head segment and a pair of mouth hooks, with which they mash their food and then suck up the juices.

Drosophila