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An integrative approach to discovering cryptic species within the Bemisia tabaci whitefly species complex

An integrative approach to discovering cryptic species within the Bemisia tabaci whitefly species complex

Vyskočilová, Soňa, Tay, Wee Tek, van Brunschot, Sharon ORCID: 0000-0002-9634-9463, Seal, Susan ORCID: 0000-0002-3952-1562 and Colvin, John (2018) An integrative approach to discovering cryptic species within the Bemisia tabaci whitefly species complex. Scientific Reports, 8:10886. ISSN 2045-2322 (Online) (doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29305-w)

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Abstract

Bemisia tabaci is a cryptic whitefly-species complex that includes some of the most damaging pests and plant-virus vectors of a diverse range of food and fibre crops worldwide. We combine experimental evidence of: (i) differences in reproductive compatibility, (ii) hybrid verification using a specific nuclear DNA marker and hybrid fertility confirmation and (iii) high-throughput sequencing-derived mitogenomes, to show that the “Mediterranean” (MED) B. tabaci comprises at least two distinct biological species; the globally invasive MED from the Mediterranean Basin and the “African silver-leafing” (ASL) from sub-Saharan Africa, which has no associated invasion records. We demonstrate that, contrary to its common name, the “ASL” does not induce squash silver-leafing symptoms and show that species delimitation based on the widely applied 3.5% partial mtCOI gene sequence divergence threshold produces discordant results, depending on the mtCOI region selected. Of the 292 published mtCOI sequences from MED/ASL groups, 158 (54%) are low quality and/or potential pseudogenes. We demonstrate fundamental deficiencies in delimiting cryptic B. tabaci species, based solely on partial sequences of a mitochondrial barcoding gene. We advocate an integrative approach to reveal the true species richness within cryptic species complexes, which is integral to the deployment of effective pest and disease management strategies.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © The Author(s) 2018. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Bemisia tabaci, Whitefly complex
Subjects: S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group: Faculty of Engineering & Science
Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute
Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute > Agriculture, Health & Environment Department
Last Modified: 01 Oct 2018 16:31
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/21809

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