Molecular characterization ofGonatocerus tuberculifemur(Ogloblin) (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae), a prospectiveHomalodisca vitripennis(Germar) (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) biological control candidate agent from South America: divergent clades

Abstract

We genetically characterized the prospective South American egg parasitoid candidate, Gonatocerus tuberculifemur, of the glassy-winged sharpshooter (GWSS), Homalodisca vitripennis, for a neoclassical biological control program in California. Two molecular methods, inter-simple sequence repeat-polymerase chain reaction DNA fingerprinting and a phylogeographic approach inferred from the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene (COI), were utilized. Five geographic populations from South America were analyzed; in addition, a phylogenetic analysis was performed with several named and one unnamed Gonatocerus species using the COI gene. DNA fingerprinting demonstrated a fixed geographic banding pattern difference in the population from San Rafael, Mendoza Province, Argentina. The COI analysis uncovered haplotype or geographic structure in G. tuberculifemur. A neighbour-joining distance (NJ) and a single most parsimonious tree (MP) clustered the populations into two well-supported distinct clades with strong bootstrap values (97-99% and 92-99%, respectively) with populations from San Rafael clustering into clade 2 and the rest of the populations clustering into clade 1. No haplotype sharing was observed between individuals from the two clades. Phylogenetic analyses performed by NJ and MP methods with 15 Gonatocerus species confirmed species boundaries and again uncovered two distinct clades in G. tuberculifemur with strong bootstrap support (95-100% and 68-100%, respectively). However, the NJ tree supported the morphologically defined relationships better than the MP tree. The molecular evidence in the present study is suggestive of a species level divergence. Because G. tuberculifemur is under consideration as a potential biological control agent for GWSS in California, understanding cryptic variation in this species is critical.

Mitochondrial DNA diversity of Cleruchoides noackae (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae): a potential biological control agent for Thaumastocoris peregrinus (Hemiptera: Thaumastocoridae)

“…This was indicative of a single species (Hebert et al 2004), which is believed to be that of the newly described egg parasitoid, C. noackae (Lin et al 2007). The genetic divergence falls within the mean mtDNA intra-specific divergence range (0 -4 %) reported for Hymentoptera (Cognato 2006;Meier et al 2008) and other Mymaridae parasitoids (de León et al 2008). The level of nucleotide divergence was approximately the same as that of the host, T. peregrinus over the same area (Nadel et al 2010).…”

Parasitism and olfactory responses of Dastarcus helophoroides (Coleoptera: Bothrideridae) to different Cerambycid hosts

“…For traditional biological control, differences between populations of natural enemies sometimes arouse interest (Madeira et al 2001;Schrey et al 2005;de León et al 2008). In our studies, the three populations of D. helophoroides showed differences in attraction to host-frass, which would help to select the type of D. helophoroides population to use for biocontrol of a certain longhorned beetle species.…”

Molecular Markers Discriminate Closely Related Species <I>Encarsia diaspidicola</I> and <I>Encarsia berlesei</I> (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae): Biocontrol Candidate Agents for White Peach Scale in Hawaii

“…The ISSR-PCR DNA Þngerprinting method also readily distinguished the adult stages of E. diaspidicola and E. berlesei with two separate ISSR primers. Not sharing of bands is usually an indication of lack of gene ßow and reproductive isolation (Hoy et al 2000;de Leó n et al 2004ade Leó n et al , 2006bde Leó n et al , 2008. We have used this sensitive method extensively and have shown it to be very useful in uncovering species level divergences in a majority of cases, speciÞcally with egg parasitoids of sharpshooters belonging to the genus Gonatocerus Nees (de Leó n et al 2004a(de Leó n et al , 2006bde Leó n and Morgan 2007;Triapitsyn et al 2008).…”

“…The DNA Sequencing Software Program Sequencher (Gene Codes Corp., Ann Arbor, MI) was used to process the raw COI sequences and the program DNAStar (DNAStar, Inc., Madison, WI) by using the ClustalW algorithm was used to calculate percentage divergence (Higgins et al 1994), as described in de Leó n et al (2006bde Leó n et al ( , 2008. For the sequence analysis, ClustalX (Thompson et al 1997) and PAUP version 4.0b10 (Swofford 2002) for the Macintosh (PPC) were used for reconstruction of trees with the bootstrapping (as percentage of 1,000 replications) function to conÞrm the reliability of the trees (Felsenstein 1985).…”

“…This endoparasitoid is a natural enemy of white peach scale in Hawaii (G.N., unpublished data); 3) test the efÞ-ciency of one of the COI markers (E. diaspidicolaspeciÞc) for detecting parasitism in white peach scale; and 4) determine whether ISSR-PCR could be used as a molecular tool to discriminate the two Encarsia spp. We have used this method extensively because of its increased power to resolve genetic relationships (Zietkiewicz et al 1994;de Leó n et al 2004ade Leó n et al , 2006bde Leó n et al , 2008de Leó n and Morgan 2007;Triapitsyn et al 2008).…”