Molecular delineation of the Agave Red Worm Comadia redtenbacheri  (Lepidoptera: Cossidae)

Abstract

Comadia redtenbacheri (Hammerschmidt) (Agave Red Worm) is the only member of the family Cossidae that has been described as a phytophagous specialist of the plant genus Agave, which is mainly distributed in México. A new extraction protocol adapted from Stewart Via (1993) has been implemented for sequencing the COI gene from samples collected in five states of the North Central (Querétaro and Zacatecas), South Central (Estado de México) and East Central (Hidalgo and Tlaxcala) regions of México with the purpose of contributing to delineation of the species. A Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree based on these COI sequences as well as COI sequences from other Cossinae species was developed to complement the existing morphological and taxonomic approaches to delineation of this species. As expected, our Comadia samples cluster together within a monophyletic clade that includes four C. redtenbacheri sequences previously reported. This group seems to be consistent with our reconstruction, which is supported by a bootstrap value of over 99%. The closely related branches associated with the latter group include organisms known to be the plant and tree borers of the Cossinae subfamily. The COI sequences from our samples were analyzed to determine the percentage of identity among the C. redtenbacheri in a first attempt to detect differences in the sequence that matches a particular region of México.

We and herbivores eat endophytes

“…The maguey red worm ( Comadia redtenbacheri ) is edible and endemic to Mexico. Larvae are plant‐eating specialists of Agave inner plant tissues (Hernández‐Flores et al , 2015; Cárdenas‐Aquino et al , 2018). Enterococcus and Klebsiella that secrete indole‐acetic acid and solubilize phosphate were isolated as endophytes from leaf bases of agave plants (Martinez‐Rodriguez et al , 2019) and from the larva guts as well (our unpublished results).…”

The Relationships of Closely Related Cossid Moth Species among Geographically Diverse with Respect to Indian Cossid Moth: (Lepidoptera: Cossidae)

“…A kilo of the larvae would cost around ₹10,000, thereby providing high socio-economic value to local sellers. Some other Cossidae species, like Comadia redtenbacheri (1848 by Carl Eduard Hammerschmidt) larvae, are also reported to be edible [10,11].…”

Adult population fluctuation of Comadia redtenbacheri (Hammerschmidt, 1847) (Lepidoptera: Cossidae)

“…(Ancona, 1931;Brown, 1975;Ramos-Elorduy et al 2011). Information exists on its biology and behaviour (Miranda-Perkins et al 2013;Llanderal et al 2017), associated organisms parasitoids (Zetina et al 2009(Zetina et al , 2012Zetina & Llanderal, 2014) and bacteria (Hernández-Flores et al 2015), reproduction (Ramírez-Cruz & Llanderal-Cázares, 2015), morphology of all its developmental stages (Castro-Torres & Llanderal-Cázares, 2015, adult emergence in laboratory (Miranda-Perkins et al 2016), cultivation by induced infestation in agaves (Delgado-Tejeda et al 2017;Espinosa-García et al 2018), bionomics (Llanderal-Cázares et al 2017) and molecular delineation (Cárdenas-Aquino et al 2018). However, the biology, behaviour, and ecology of adults has not been studied, and the abiotic factors (temperature, relative humidity and rainfall) that affect its emergence are unknown.…”