Abstract
Simple SummaryLycorma delicatula (White), the spotted lanternfly (SLF) is known to be native to China, India, and Vietnam, but after the first detection in 2004 as invasive in Korea, it was also found in Japan in 2008 and the United States in 2014. As a polyphagous sap-sucking insect, the SLF seriously damages the host plant by sucking phloem sap and producing honeydew, which causes sooty mold disease on leaves and this damage eventually results in an economic loss by reducing the quality and yield of the fruits. After the emergence and spread of SLF in Korea, it has not been confirmed yet where they came from and how they invaded from the source region. To infer the most likely source population for the Korean invasive populations, we investigated the population structure of SLF including its native region (China) and invasive regions (Japan and Korea) using 15 microsatellite loci which were previously developed. Our study set out to solve the correlation between the source and invasive populations of SLF, especially with regards to identifying artificial transfer possibly reoccurring in other invasive regions.Lycorma delicatula (White) suddenly arrived in Korea where it rapidly spread out in the central region of Korea and caused serious damage to grape vineyards. To trace the source region of its invasiveness, population genetic structures were compared between the native region, China, and the introduced regions, Korea and Japan. We examined 762 individuals from 38 different population collections using 15 microsatellite loci. Both principal coordinate and structure analyses displayed that the Chinese populations were separated into three subgroups which were located significantly far apart from each other. Among them, the Shanghai population was located closest to most Korean populations. Based on the genetic relationships and structures, it was revealed that the multiple introductions into Korea occurred at least three times. In addition, the Shanghai population was strongly estimated to be a source of initial invasive populations of Korea. In addition, analysis of the approximate Bayesian computation suggested simultaneous spread from two distant locations early in the invasion by artificial transportation of the host plants bearing egg masses. Our population genetics study can provide a precedent case with regards to identifying spreads by anthropogenic outcomes in other invasive regions.
Highlights
The occurrence of invasive pests is considerably increasing due to a large degree of human-mediated trades around the world [1,2,3]
We addressed some questions concerning the invasion of spotted lanternfly (SLF) in East Asia by focusing on identifying the geographic origin and invasive route of SLF, especially weighting on the possibility of introduction from China: (1) Did the SLF come from China? (2) If SLF came from China, where did it come from? (3) Has the SLF been introduced in Korea several times independently? (4) Where did the central Japanese group come from? (5) Is there any connection with the Korean group? we investigated the population structure of SLF, including its native region (China) and invasive regions (Japan and Korea), using 15 microsatellite loci which were previously developed [26]
Our results provide a well-resolved genetic structure of SLF in its native and invasive regions
Summary
The occurrence of invasive pests is considerably increasing due to a large degree of human-mediated trades around the world [1,2,3]. Our results suggest that some populations of SLF in around 2009 have been introduced independently and intermittently into Korea, and afterwards, certain populations that appeared to dominate the genetic structure in 2010 had a large spread around that time. As a result of performing the ABC analysis, the initial spread of dominant groups (similar to Shanghai) spread to Korea collected in 2010 and 2011 did not consist of sequential geographic paths in Korea In other words, it seems that their spread was not a step-by-step spread that occurs naturally by migration, but that it occurred simultaneously in two places in the north and the middle of Korea by artificial transportation, i.e., hitchhiking [57,58]. The initial spread process of this SLF exactly corresponded with the results of our ABC analysis
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