Presence of the invasive whiteflyAleurocanthus spiniferus(Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) in Greece

Abstract

Aleurocanthus spiniferus (Quaintance) (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), commonly known as the citrus (or orange) spiny whitefly, is an important pest of various economic crops such as citrus and tea and causes severe economic losses. It is reported for the first time in Greece, in the island of Corfu (North‐West Greece) on sweet orange trees (Citrus sinensis). Morphological and molecular data has been used for species identification. Sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene from Greek populations have been compared with sequences of the species from Italy and Montenegro, as well as with COI sequences retrieved from GenBank, to examine the genetic diversity of the species. Based on the preliminary results, it appears that the population from Corfu probably arose through several independent introductions.

Aleurocanthus spiniferus (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) in Some European Countries: Diffusion, Hosts, Molecular Characterization, and Natural Enemies

“…In the present study, only two haplotypes (H1 and H2) were found, different from what was recently found in Greece, where four different haplotypes were recorded [16]. Therefore, some conclusions are possible (Figure 2):…”

“…Mitochondrial COI sequencing revealed the presence of two haplotypes in the sampled A. spiniferus (Table 1). BLAST search revealed that both obtained haplotypes belong to mitochondrial haplogroup 2 [9] corresponding to the haplotypes H1 and H2 recently found in Greece, and Greece, Italy, and Montenegro, respectively [16].…”

“…(1) The H4 haplotype seems to have a reduced diffusion (present only in Greece) [16] because it was not found in any other of the collection areas (Italy and Albania). (2) The H3 haplotype was previously found in Apulia [16] in the area of the first interception of OSW but it was not found in the present study.…”

“…Aleurocanthus spiniferus (Quaintance) (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), the orange spiny whitefly (OSW), originating from China and South and Southeast Asia, is one of the serious pests infesting citrus [9]. Since its description [10], in the span of a century, OSW spread throughout Asia, Africa, Australia, and in the Pacific islands [11][12][13][14][15][16]. OSW was reported for the first time in the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) areas after its first detection in the Lecce District (Apulia region, Southeast Italy) in 2008 [17].…”

“…Although the spread of this pest was limited solely to the south-eastern area of Italy for about a decade, in June 2017 A. spiniferus was found in Salerno (Southwest Italy) [20]. Concurrently, OSW was also detected in the Balkan Peninsula including Croatia (2012), Montenegro (2013), and Greece (2016) [16,21,22].…”