Molecular Identification of Sand Flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) in Eastern North America by Using PCR-RFLP

Abstract

Sand flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) are small blood-feeding dipterans that are primary vectors of numerous human and livestock pathogens. Effective surveillance programs with accurate identification tools are critical in development and implementation of modern integrated pest management programs. Although morphological keys are available for North American species, identification can still be challenging owing to the nature of sample preparation and incompatibility with molecular or biochemical-based pathology assays. Further, the potential for introduction of Old World or other exotic species is not accounted for by current keys. Herein, we present the development and validation of a restriction fragment-length polymorphism-based molecular identification method. Specifically, cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, a mitochondrial DNA marker, was used to distinguish two species of adult sand flies indigenous to eastern North America with two exotic species not yet known to occur in the United States.

Molecular systematics applied to Phlebotomine sandflies: Review and perspectives

“…Thirdly, in four publications, DNA sequences have been used to associate males and females in existing species (Depaquit et al, 2004a;Khadri et al, 2008;Parvizi et al, 2010b;Zhang et al, 2013). Molecular markers have been sequenced several times to identify species (Mukhopadhyay et al, 2000;Depaquit et al, 2005a;Florin et al, 2010;Manonmani et al, 2010;Parvizi et al, 2010b;Latrofa et al, 2011a,b;Tiwary et al, 2012;Minter et al, 2013) whereas cyt b sequences, associated to isoenzymes revealed a new species not named (Pesson et al, 2004).…”

“…Lastly, a total of 22 publications comparing taxa belonging to different genera has been recorded (Esseghir et al, 1997;Depaquit et al, 1998Depaquit et al, , 1999Aransay et al, 2000;Esseghir and Ready, 2000;Lins et al, 2002Mazzoni et al, 2002;Torgerson et al, 2003;Vivero et al, 2007Vivero et al, , 2009Terayama et al, 2008;Kuwahara et al, 2009;Azpurua et al, 2010;Kruger et al, 2011;Latrofa et al, 2011b;Kumar et al, 2012;Jafari et al, 2013;Minter et al, 2013;Yamamoto et al, 2013;Bounamous et al, 2014;Contreras Gutierrez et al, 2014).…”

“…In Asia, the sampling included the following 22 countries: -Afghanistan (Esseghir et al, 1997;Kruger et al, 2011;Depaquit et al, 2014), -Azerbaidjan: , -China: (Zhang et al, 2009(Zhang et al, , 2013, -India (Esseghir et al, 1997;Aransay et al, 2000;Di Muccio et al, 2000;Depaquit et al, 2008b;Manonmani et al, 2010;Kumar et al, 2012;Tiwary et al, 2012), -Vaziri et al, 2007a,b;Depaquit et al, 2008bDepaquit et al, , 2013Depaquit et al, , 2014Absavaran et al, 2009;Parvizi et al, 2010a,b;Jafari et al, 2013), -Iraq (Esseghir et al, 1997), -Israel/Palestine (Esseghir et al, 1997;Aransay et al, 2000;Mukhopadhyay et al, 2000;Depaquit et al, , 2005bDepaquit et al, , 2008bDepaquit et al, , 2013Elnaiem et al, 2005;Dvorak et al, 2006Dvorak et al, , 2011Hamarsheh et al, 2007;Minter et al, 2013), -Jordan (Elnaiem et al, 2005;Hamarsheh et al, 2007;Minter et al, 2013), -Lebanon (Depaquit et al, 1999(Depaquit et al, , 2000(Depaquit et al, , 2005b(Depaquit et al, , 2008b Moin-Vaziri et al, 2007a), -Malaysia (Khadri et al, 2008), -Oman (Depaquit et...…”

“…-Algeria (Bounamous et al, 2008Depaquit et al, 2008bDepaquit et al, , 2013Depaquit et al, , 2014Franco et al, 2010), -Benin , -Burkina Faso: (Depaquit et al, 2005a(Depaquit et al, , 2008b, -Cameroon , -the Comoros (Randrianambinintsoa et al, 2012), -Egypt (Booth et al, 1991;Esseghir et al, 1997;Depaquit et al, 2000Depaquit et al, , 2008bDepaquit et al, , 2014Esseghir and Ready, 2000;Elnaiem et al, 2005;Hamarsheh et al, 2007;Khalid et al, 2012;Minter et al, 2013), -Ethiopia (Esseghir et al, 1997;Esseghir and Ready, 2000;Seblova et al, 2013), -the Republic of Guinea , -Kenya (Mukhopadhyay et al, 2000;Esseghir et al, 1997;Depaquit et al, 1998Depaquit et al, , 2000Depaquit et al, , 2008bEsseghir and Ready, 2000), -Madagascar (Depaquit et al, 2004a(Depaquit et al, ,b, 2007(Depaquit et al, , 2008aRandrianambinintsoa et al, 2012, -Mali (Khalid et al, 2010), -Morocco (Esseghir et al, 1997;Di Muccio et al, 2000;Pesson et al, 2004;Yahia et al, 2004;Hamarsheh et al, 2007;Moin-Vaziri et al, 2007a;Baron et al, 2008;Franco et al, 2010;…”

“…In North America, three studies included sandflies from the USA Minter et al, 2013) whereas no study included sandflies from Oceania.…”