No abstract

The glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis (Germar), (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), is a xylophagous leafhopper native to the southeastern United States and northern Mexico, with recent introductions into California, Arizona, French Polynesia, and Hawaii. It is a primary vector of the xylem-limited bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa Wells et al., the causative agent of Pierce's disease of grape, citrus variegated chlorosis, phony peach, and numerous leaf scorch diseases. H. vitripennis uses several hundred species of host plants for feeding, development, and reproduction. Variation in host utilization allows H. vitripennis to respond to diurnal and seasonal changes in its nutrient-poor food source, xylem fluid, as well as changing nutritional requirements of each leafhopper developmental stage. Here we provide a conceptual model that integrates behavior, life history strategies, and their associated risks with the nutritional requirements of adult and nymphal stages of H. vitripennis. The model is a useful heuristic tool that explains patterns of host plant use, describes insect behavior and ecology, suggests new associations among the ecological components, and most importantly, identifies and supports the development of suppression strategies for X. fastidiosa aimed at reducing vector populations through habitat manipulation.

Invertebrate iridescent virus 6 (IIV6) was determined to cause infection in Phyllophaga vandinei Smyth (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) through a range of modes of transmissions. This is the first evidence of IIV6 infection in P. vandinei that caused both patent and sub-lethal infections in larvae and adults. Mortality rates were determined to be ∼30% when virus inoculum was injected into larvae or adults. Adults injected with virus showed dramatically altered behavior; injected beetles were not observed feeding or mating compared with adults injected with buffer or adults that were not injected. Tissue collected from infected adults resulted in infection when injected into healthy adults, as confirmed with PCR. PCR also confirmed that frass of infected larvae and adults contained virus, and when reconstituted frass from infected individuals was injected into healthy adults or larvae they become infected. Healthy adults could be infected by coming into contact with soil or plant material that had been exposed to infected adults as much as two weeks prior to introduction of nonvirus exposed adults. Although relatively low mortality resulted when adults or larvae were injected with the virus, the demonstration of horizontal transmission, potentially through frass of infected individuals, identifies a mode of transmission that may be exploited as a potential management tool to reduce P. vandinei.

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As the amount of massive and heterogeneous genomic data and the relative annotations continue to grow, A flexible and easy-to-access data management solution is required to integrate the heterogeneous genomics data that can accommodate the needs of diverse annotation tasks. This research expounds the benefits of using IBM DB2 Content Manager (CM) Software by conducting taskoriented grape genome annotations, and data quality assurance checks throughout the annotation process. To demonstrate the usability of this application, we describe the implementation of two real-life content-based, genome annotation case scenarios: 1) Expressed Sequence Tags annotation and 2) sequence annotation related to Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) markers. The IBM DB2 CM allowed users to easily construct content-based genomic information applications as rapidly built and readily adapted customized content documents with attributes within an easy-to-use interface system. Users can simultaneously conduct the annotation quality checks while making annotations by utilizing a built-in, standardized data quality control assurance procedure [referred to as] annotation "routing." The system provides search features or cross-links with different annotation contents or data formats. The data quality workflow and procedure within the system also resulted in accuracy and consistency in the data annotation and curation lifecycle.