Biological and genetic aspects of experimental hybrids from species of the Phyllosoma complex (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Triatominae)

Abstract

The present work is a thorough investigation of the degree of reproductive isolation between

Biological and genetic aspects of crosses between species of the genus Meccus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae Triatominae)

“…Similarly, all F1 offspring of crosses involving M. bassolsae and most specimens of the second generation displayed most of the typical characteristics of the four species (M. pallidipennis, M. longipennis, M. picturatus and M. phyllosomus) crossed with it, as did previously reported specimens resulting from crosses between M. bassolsae and M. mazzottii (Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b (Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b). Our findings support a model in which different degrees of reproductive isolation exist among the species of Meccus involved in this study, and M. phyllosomus is more reproductively isolated from the other five species of Meccus than is M. bassolsae.…”

“…Similar results were obtained when M. mazzottii were crossed with specimens of the other four species of the Phyllosoma group, with the exception of M. bassolsae (Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b).…”

“…Meccus phyllosomus was crossed with the other five species of Meccus, whereas M. bassolsae was crossed with three species, M. pallidipennis, M. longipennis and M. picturatus, following methodology (Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b) previously established for crosses involving the relevant species. For those crosses, 10 couples from each set were placed in plastic jars (5 cm diameter x 10 cm height), as indicated in Table I.…”

“…Biological and molecular studies on typical specimens (Mazzotti & Osorio 1942, Bargues et al 2008, Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b) and on the naturally crossbred descendents of different individuals from sympatric populations (M. pallidipennis, M. longipennis and M. picturatus) (Martínez-Ibarra et al 2009) have lead to a proposal to reclassify some (M. pallidipennis, M. longipennis and M. picturatus) (Marcilla et al 2001, Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b or all (Bargues et al 2008 of the six species of the genus Meccus to subspecies of M. phyllosomus. Other molecular and biological studies support the consideration of these groups as full species (Sainz et al 2004, Pfeiler et al 2006, Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b). However, molecular evidence (Bargues et al 2008) supports the revalidation of the genus Meccus for the six species traditionally grouped into the Phyllosoma complex (Carcavallo et al 2000).…”

“…Previous studies have estimated the degree of reproductive isolation among four of these species (M. pallidipennis, M. longipennis, M. picturatus and M. mazzottii) (Mazzotti & Osorio 1942, Martínez-Ibarra et al 2008b; however the degree of isolation remains unknown between the remaining species. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate reproductive isolation among the six species of Meccus, with the aims of broadening our understanding of this phenomenon and gathering additional information about both the degree of closeness among them and the appropriate level for their taxonomical assignment.…”