Abstract
Once considered a single species, the whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is a complex of numerous morphologically indistinguishable species. Within the last three decades, two of its members (MED and MEAM1) have become some of the world's most damaging agricultural pests invading countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas and affecting a vast range of agriculturally important food and fiber crops through both feeding-related damage and the transmission of numerous plant viruses. For some time now, researchers have relied on a single mitochondrial gene and/or a handful of nuclear markers to study this species complex. Here, we move beyond this by using 38,041 genome-wide Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, and show that the two invasive members of the complex are closely related species with signatures of introgression with a third species (IO). Gene flow patterns were traced between contemporary invasive populations within MED and MEAM1 species and these were best explained by recent international trade. These findings have profound implications for delineating the B. tabaci species status and will impact quarantine measures and future management strategies of this global pest.
Highlights
Species invasions are major drivers for declines in species richness [1] and have arisen to prominence as major threats to the social and economic well-being of communities [2,3,4]
The reads were aligned to the B. tabaci MEAM1 and MED genomes [23, 24]
The mapping percentage to the MEAM1 genome reference was above 80% across all samples except one sample from Sudan (78%) which is most likely caused by the low depth of sequencing and the DNA quality for this specimen
Summary
Species invasions are major drivers for declines in species richness [1] and have arisen to prominence as major threats to the social and economic well-being of communities [2,3,4]. The features that make species invasive are diverse and idiosyncratic, but one element that is consistently important for an invading species is the ability to adapt rapidly to environmental change [8,9,10]. When such adaptation is genetic, evidence for it can be traced by comparing the genomes of invasive species and non-invasive ones.
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