Abstract
The olive moth -Prays oleae Bern.- remains a significant pest of olive trees showing situation dependent changes in population densities and in severity of damages. The genetic variability of olive moth was assessed on three main olive orchards regions in Portugal by three different markers (COI, nad5 and RpS5), suggesting high species diversity albeit with no obvious relation with a regional pattern nor to an identified ecological niche. Selected COI sequences obtained in this study were combined with those available in the databases for Prays genus to generate a global dataset. The reconstruction of the Prays phylogeny based on this marker revealed the need to revise Prays oleae to confirm its status of single species: COI data suggests the co-existence of two sympatric evolutionary lineages of morphologically cryptic olive moth. We show, however, that the distinct mitochondrial subdivision observed in the partial COI gene fragment is not corroborated by the other DNA sequences. There is the need of understanding this paradigm and the extent of Prays variability, as the disclosure of lineage-specific differences in biological traits between the identified lineages is fundamental for the development of appropriate pest management practices.
Highlights
Olive is an ancient ubiquitous crop of considerable socioeconomic importance, being a major agro-ecosystem in the Mediterranean basin
The reconstructed unconstrained phylogeny of the genus Prays based on c oxidase subunit I (COI) (Fig 2) resolved Prays oleae as paraphyletic
The fragment of the nuclear gene encoding for the ribosomal protein S5a (RpS5) shows almost equivalent numbers of non-synonymous and synonymous sites
Summary
Olive is an ancient ubiquitous crop of considerable socioeconomic importance, being a major agro-ecosystem in the Mediterranean basin. For the Mediterranean region, three main olive pests have been recognized: the olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae Gmelin, the olive moth, Prays oleae Bern. The olive moth, Prays oleae (Lepidoptera, Yponomeutidae) remains an abundant pest of olive trees throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the Middle East and Canary Islands [4]. The olive moth is being held responsible for high losses in the olive yield [5], lowering tree growth, fruit set and fruit/oil quality. In north Portugal this moth competes in importance with the olive fruit fly, being considered the most important olive tree pests due to the large production losses [6]. There is empirical indication that the seriousness of the losses due to Prays oleae are highly variable, depending both on time (crop seasons) and space (regions)
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