Two mitochondrial haplotypes in Pterochloroides persicae (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Lachninae) associated with different feeding sites

Abstract

Pterochloroides persicae (Cholodkovsky) is an aphid species belonging to the subfamily Lachninae that uses different members of Rosaceae (specially Prunus spp.) as hosts. Partial sequences from the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 (COI) and the nuclear long-wave opsin genes were obtained for approximately 100 P. persicae aphid individuals sampled from 34 colonies collected mainly in Tunisia and other Mediterranean locations. The variability found at the mitochondrial locus revealed the presence of two maternal haplotypes in the studied area that differed in a single nucleotide. The nuclear gene analyzed, however, failed to reveal any variability in this species. The variability found at the COI locus was related to the season of aphid sampling and with the site of feeding, with haplotype I mostly detected in samples collected in spring and summer on trunks and branches and haplotype II only detected in aphids collected in autumn on roots. The observed pattern of molecular variation suggests the presence of two clonal races of P. persicae coexisting in the studied area differentially adapted to conditions prevalent in the alternative seasons and/or to different feeding sites.

Genetic Structure of the Aphis craccivora (Hemiptera: Aphididae) From Thailand Inferred From Mitochondrial COI Gene Sequence

“…The percentage of parsimony-informative characters relative to the total number of characters for COI gene was 2.32%, and the frequency of transition/transversion mutations was 36.36/63.64. Nucleotide composition of COI was 35.3% A, 40.6% T, 10.2% G, and 13.8% C. Therefore, the A + T nucleotide bias reported in the animal mitochondrial genome (Boore, 1999) was also found in the A. craccivora COI sequences, as also detected from previous studies on aphids (Simon et al, 1994, Von Dohlen and Moran, 2000, Von Dohlen et al, 2002, Lee et al, 2011, Lassaad et al, 2013). …”

Comparison of manual and semi-automatic DNA extraction protocols for the barcoding characterization of hematophagous louse flies (Diptera: Hippoboscidae)

“…By using the Qiagen kit, we successfully amplified the 658 bp fragments of all louse flies with high sequence quality. These results are in accordance with previous studies comparing DNA extraction procedures from samples with poorly preserved or degraded DNA (Yang et al , Martínez‐de la Puente et al ). These results might be especially useful for studies on valuable specimens held in museums, as only a small fragment of tissue was necessary for barcoding while retaining the rest of the specimen as a voucher.…”

“…The Hotshot procedure presented similar results to those obtained with the Maxwell kit. Previous studies have already demonstrated the utility of the Hotshot procedure for DNA barcoding using complete individuals (Montero‐Pau et al , Lassaad et al ). Our results confirmed that the Hotshot procedure yields enough DNA of high quality for barcoding even when using very small quantities of tissue, consequently retaining most of the individual as a voucher.…”

DNA Barcoding Subtropical Aphids and Implications for Population Differentiation

“…With the development of the DNA barcoding technique [1], the discovering of cryptic species turned out to be easier than before [4,84]. Aphids feed and mate on their hosts, and the association with host plants can provide important information for species identification [46,47,50], and differentiation may occur by host shift and following specialization between intraspecific populations [5,93], even by feeding sites [94]. Some aphid species were described with overwhelming host specific lineages (host races) [5,93,95,96].…”