Molecular identification of eriophyoid mites in Thrace using the 28S and COI genes

Abstract

Eriophyoid mites are recognized as the second most economically important group among the Acari following spider mites. The identification of eriopyhoid mites traditionally based on morphological characters. However, the size of these diagnostic structures is very small and this often causes misidentification of species. In this study, we used DNA-based identification for five eriophyoid species collected from the Thrace region of Turkey (Aceria erinea, Rhyncaphytoptus ficifoliae, Eriophyes pyri, Aceria massalongoi, Colomerus vitis collected from Juglans regia L., Ficus carica L., Pyrus communis L., Vitex-agnus castus L., Vitis vinifera L., respectively) using both cytochrome oxidase subunit I (MW396744-MW396748) and 28S rRNA (MW396565-MW396571) in combination with morphological taxonomy. A phylogenetic tree has also been constructed for each gene to get a deeper understanding of the evolutionary history of Eriophyoidea. Besides all the molecular data herein obtained are the first eriophyoidea sequences for the country, some of the sequences have been submitted to the public GenBank database for the first time. Further studies are urgently needed to reveal genetic variation within and between eriophyoid species to make accurate species identification using molecular technics.