Drosophila melanogaster, Zaprionus indianus and D. repleta revealed significantly higher ethanol and acetic acid tolerance levels as compared with D. kikkawai and D. immigrans. The parrel patterns of utilisation of other primary and secondary alcohols seem to be correlated with the concentrations of these metabolites found in natural food resources. The longevity effects of n-butanol (0.4 to 1.5%) were found to be significantly high in all the five drosophilids as compared to 2-butanol. The interspecific differences for resource utilisation are in agreement with niche-width hypothesis and seem to be adaptively maintained by natural selection mechanisms.