Abstract
Investigating how crop domestication and early farming mediated crop attributes, distributions, and interactions with antagonists may shed light on today's agricultural pest problems. Crop domestication generally involved artificial selection for traits desirable to early farmers, for example, increased productivity or yield, and enhanced qualities, though invariably it altered the interactions between crops and insects, and expanded the geographical ranges of crops. Thus, some studies suggest that with crop domestication and spread, insect populations on wild crop ancestors gave rise to pestiferous insect populations on crops. Here, we addressed whether the emergence of corn leafhopper (Dalbulus maidis) as an agricultural pest may be associated with domestication and early spread of maize (Zea mays mays). We used AFLP markers and mitochondrial COI sequences to assess population genetic structuring and haplotype relationships among corn leafhopper samples from maize and its wild relative Zea diploperennis from multiple locations in Mexico and Argentina. We uncovered seven corn leafhopper haplotypes contained within two haplogroups, one haplogroup containing haplotypes associated with maize and the other containing haplotypes associated with Z. diploperennis in a mountainous habitat. Within the first haplogroup, one haplotype was predominant across Mexican locations, and another across Argentinean locations; both were considered pestiferous. We suggested that the divergence times of the maize‐associated haplogroup and of the “pestiferous” haplotypes are correlated with the chronology of maize spread following its domestication. Overall, our results support a hypothesis positing that maize domestication favored corn leafhopper genotypes preadapted for exploiting maize so that they became pestiferous, and that with the geographical expansion of maize farming, corn leafhopper colonized Z. diploperennis, a host exclusive to secluded habitats that serves as a refuge for archaic corn leafhopper genotypic diversity. Broadly, our results help explain the extents to which crop domestication and early spread may have mediated the emergence of today's agricultural pests.
Highlights
IntroductionThe chronology and genetics of domestication and spread of important crops, for example, maize (Zea mays mays L.) (Staller et al, 2006; Kato et al, 2009; Staller, 2010; Hufford et al, 2012; Blake, 2015), comparatively little is known about how today’s pest assemblages may have been shaped partly by agricultural, ecological and evolutionary processes over the last ß10K years
The haplotype network suggests two haplogroups, one comprising Haplotypes A–D, the other Haplotypes E–G. These results showed that: (1) Haplotype E is dominant and widespread in Mexico, on both maize and perennial teosinte, while Haplotype G is dominant and widespread on maize in Argentina; (2) Haplotypes A–D and F are rare in Mexico, and Haplotype E is infrequent in Argentina; and (3) two haplogroups may occur among Mexican and Argentinean samples of corn leafhopper
We asked whether the genetic structuring and haplotype diversity and relationships we found in corn leafhopper may on one hand be correlated with the established chronology of maize domestication and spread, and on the other hand may be reflective of the timing and context of the leafhopper’s emergence as a pest
Summary
The chronology and genetics of domestication and spread of important crops, for example, maize (Zea mays mays L.) (Staller et al, 2006; Kato et al, 2009; Staller, 2010; Hufford et al, 2012; Blake, 2015), comparatively little is known about how today’s pest assemblages may have been shaped partly by agricultural, ecological and evolutionary processes over the last ß10K years. Common-garden studies showed that the abundances of important pests of sunflower and maize were higher in crops compared to crop wild ancestors, partly due to enhanced performance and lower parasitism of those pests on the former compared to the latter hosts (Bernal et al, 2015; Chen, 2016). The evidence accumulated to date shows that crop domestication and the spread of agriculture mediated the evolution and ecology of herbivores that are presently considered pests (Medina et al, 2012; Chen et al, 2015; Chen, 2016; Medina, 2017; Forbes et al, 2017)
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