The Terellia virens group includes eight species of uniformly greenish flies with white setulose abdomens and hyaline wings, variable in the characters of the male and female terminalia. Three new species are described and illustrated: Terellia freidbergi sp. n. from Middle and Near East, from flower heads of Centaurea behen L., T. ivannikovi V. Korneyev et Evstigneev, sp. n. from European Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, breeding in flower heads of Ce. chartolepis Greuter, and T. whitei V. Korneyev et Mohamadzade, sp. n. reared from flower heads of Cousinia spp. in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Iran. Illustrated diagnoses or redescriptions of other species and a key to the species of Terellia with hyaline wings and white setulose abdominal tergites are given.

Honey is a widely used natural product and the price of honey from Apis cerana (ACH) and A. dorsata (ADH) is several times more expensive than the one from A. mellifera (AMH), thus there are increasing fraud issues reported in the market by mislabeling or mixing honeys with different entomological origins. In this study, three species-specific primers, targeting the NADH dehydrogenase 2 (ND2) region of honeybee mitochondrial DNA, were designed and tested to distinguish the entomological origin of ACH, ADH, and AMH. Molecular analysis showed that each primer set can specifically detect the ND2 region from the targeted honeybee DNA, but not from the others. The amplicon size for A. cerana, A. dorsata and A. mellifera were 224, 302, and 377 bp, respectively. Importantly, each primer set also specifically produced amplicons with expected size from the DNA prepared from honey samples with different entomological origins. The PCR adulteration test allowed detection of 1% of AMH in the mixture with either ACH or ADH. Furthermore, real-time PCR and melting curve analysis indicated the possible discrimination of origin of honey samples. Therefore, we provide the newly developed PCR-based method that can be used to determine the entomological origin of the three kinds of honey.

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