The spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (White) (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), is a polyphagous pest originating in China and now widely distributed in Asian countries. This is one of the more serious forestry pests with a broad host range and causes significant economic losses. Molecular comparison has been used to investigate this pest’s origin in China, and recent studies have explored the genetic structure among populations in Korea. However, the population structure of this pest in China remains poorly understood. In this study, 13 microsatellite markers and two mitochondrial markers (from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotid (NADH) dehydrogenase subunit 2 (ND2) and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 6 (ND6) regions) were used to reveal the origins and dispersal of L. delicatula based on a genetic analysis of Chinese populations from eight locations. Results show a low to high level of genetic differentiation among populations and significant genetic differentiation between both two clusters and four clusters. The network and phylogenetic analyses for mitochondrial haplotypes and population structure analyses for microsatellite datasets suggest that there is potential gene flow between geographical populations. The populations from Zhejiang and Fujian provinces may come from the other geographical populations in north China. The populations from Beijing, Henan, and Anhui provinces were regarded as the major source of migrants with a high number of migrants leaving (the effective number of migrants (Nem) = 24.40) and the low number of migrants entering (Nem = 2.05) based on the microsatellite dataset, where significant asymmetrical effective migrants to the other populations were detected by non-overlapping 95% confidence intervals.

BackgroundTea green leafhopper is one of the most dominant pests in Chinese tea plantations. Recent evidence, including morphological and molecular data, revealed that tea green leafhopper in China is the same species as in Japan, Empoasca (Matsumurasca) onukii Matsuda. Previous morphological study that revealed variation in the structure of the male genitalia within and among populations of this species suggested that there may be significant population-level genetic variation. To provide powerful molecular markers to explore the population genetic diversity and population genetic structure of this pest in China, microsatellite markers were obtained by AFLP of sequences containing repeats (FIASCO).ResultsEighteen polymorphic markers were evaluated for five populations of E. (M.) onukii, Two related empoascine leafhopper species were selected to test the transferability of the markers. Population genetic structure of E. (M.) onukii was detected using Structure analysis, principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and variance analysis. The identified markers were polymorphic with total number of alleles ranging from 6 to 24 per locus, observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.133 to 0.9 and 0.183 to 0.926, respectively, and the polymorphic information content value over all populations varied from 0.429 to 0.911.ConclusionsThis is the first study to demonstrate that microsatellite markers provide valuable information for genetic structure of E. (M.) onukii in Chinese tea plantations. There is obvious genetic differentiation between the two populations in the Southwest tea area. These microsatellite markers will be the powerful tools for genetic studies of E. (M.) onukii and improve understanding of the microevolution of this species.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12863-016-0420-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Matsumurasca onukii (Matsuda, R. (1952). Oyo‐Kontyu Tokyo , 8 (1): 19–21), one of the dominant pests in major tea production areas in Asia, currently is known to occur in Japan, Vietnam, and China, and severely threatens tea production, quality, and international trade. To elucidate the population genetic structure of this species, 1633 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 18 microsatellite markers (SSRs) were used to genotype samples from 27 sites representing 18 geographical populations distributed throughout the known range of the species in East Asia. Analyses of both SNPs and SSRs showed that M. onukii populations in Yunnan exhibit high‐genetic differentiation and structure compared with the other populations. The Kagoshima (JJ) and Shizuoka (JS) populations from Japan were separated from populations from China by SNPs, but clustered with populations from Jinhua (JH), Yingde (YD), Guilin (GL), Fuzhou (FZ), Hainan (HQ), Leshan (CT), Chongqing (CY), and Zunyi (ZY) tea plantations in China and the Vietnamese Vinh Phuc (VN) population based on the SSR data. In contrast, CT, CY, ZY, and Shaanxi (SX) populations clustered together based on SNPs, but were separated by SSRs. Both marker datasets identified significant geographic differentiation among the 18 populations. Various environmental and anthropogenic factors, including geographical barriers to migration, human transport of hosts ( Camellia sinesis [L.] O. Kuntze) and adaptation of M. onukii to various local climatic zones possibly account for the rapid spread of this pest in Asia. The results demonstrate that SNPs from high‐throughput genotyping data can be used to reveal subtle genetic substructure at broad scales in r‐strategist insects.