A practical guide to identifying members of the Bemisia tabaci species complex: and other morphologically identical species

Abstract

Members of the Bemisia tabaci species complex (whiteflies) are a considerable threat to a broad range of agriculture and horticulture food and fiber crops. There are hundreds of papers a year published on the members of B. tabaci species complex, many failing to either correctly identify the species involved or confusing identity. Correct identification is a crucial first step in any study, yet all too often, especially in cases where the primary focus of the study is plant pathology, is overlooked. The whitefly research community has struggled for years with common terminology and consistent methods for species identification of various members of the complex due to (1) the lack of a reliable global genetic resource and (2) the complexities of the phylogenetic methods needed to identify unknown individuals correctly. The goal of this paper are to provide a practical guide for identifying unknown whiteflies using a global curated dataset of mitochondrial COI that is freely available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4225/08/50EB54B6F1042. The methods and resources outlined here can be readily extended to other species that are morphologically indistinguishable. CONCLUDING REMARKS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONSThere are many different options for phylogenetic analyses (Yang and Rannala, 2012) and species delimitation (Rannala and Yang, 2013) beyond the B. tabaci literature. The purpose of this paper www.frontiersin.org

The autophagy pathway participates in resistance to tomato yellow leaf curl virus infection in whiteflies

“…1,2 One of the cryptic species, Middle East Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1, previously referred to as the B "biotype") has invaded many regions of the world and caused extensive crop damage through direct feeding and transmission of plant viruses. 3,4 More than 200 species of plant viruses are exclusively transmitted by the whitefly B. tabaci, mostly begomoviruses.…”

Phylogenetic Relationships among Whiteflies in the Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) Species Complex from Major Cassava Growing Areas in Kenya

“…Recent studies have reported new species (Asia II 9, Asia II 10, Asia III, and China 3, and Asia I-India and New World 2), for a total number of 34 morphologically [24] indistinguishable species reported in the B. tabaci complex [25,26,27]. The worldwide spread of emerging species, such as B. tabaci MEAM1, also known as B. argentifolii , and a Bemisia tabaci MED, continue to cause severe crop losses which will likely continue to increase, resulting in higher pesticide use on many crops (tomato, beans, cassava, cotton, cucurbits, potato, sweet potato).…”

Identification of mungbean lines with tolerance or resistance to yellow mosaic in fields in India where different begomovirus species and different Bemisia tabaci cryptic species predominate

“…PCR products were analyzed on agarose gels and at least one PCR amplicon per sampling location was sequenced (Sequiserve, Vaterstetten, Germany). Partial mtCOI sequences were trimmed to 657 bp (Dinsdale et al 2010) and analyzed using the Global Bemisia dataset release version 31 (De Barro and Boykin 2013;Boykin and De Barro 2014) for species identification. Sequences were aligned using ClustalW v1.8 (Thompson et al 1994).…”

“…3.2; (Ronquist et al 2012) following the method described by Dinsdale et al (2010). Sequences of this study were assigned to species (Dinsdale et al 2010) and named according to Boykin and De Barro (2014) with modifications. The format is: Species_Country [In = India]_Year of sampling_Location_Host.…”

“…Begomoviruses are transmitted by the whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) (Hemiptera, Aleyrodidae) in a persistent circulative manner (Markham et al 1994). Based on mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (mtCOI) partial sequences, B. tabaci is a complex composed of at least 34 cryptic species (Boykin and De Barro 2014), hereafter referred to as species. Although these species are morphologically indistinguishable, they show considerable variation in their biological traits.…”