First Record of Morphological and Molecular Identification of Mealybug Pseudococcus Jackbeardsleyi (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) in Costa Rica

摘要

Pseudococcus jackbeardsleyi is a native species of the Neotropical region. Currently there is not an updated record of these species of mealybug in Costa Rica. The aim of this study was to analyze female mealybugs from Siquirre?a plantation, Siquirres, Province of Limón, describing the morphology of the insect through the traditional technique of light microscopy and also a molecular description by three universal genes (18S ribosomal, E.F-1α and COXI). The morphological description was made in the Center for Research on Microscopic structures (CIEMic, acronyms in Spanish), UCR on 2012 and the molecular analysis was done in the Molecular Phytopathology Laboratory ending on 2014. According to the obtained results, the insect was described by the presence of the oral rim tubular duct, which was corroborated by the technique of Scanning Electron Microscopy as defining characteristic that differentiates P. jackbeardsleyi from P. elisae. Likewise through phylogenetic trees from molecular results, it was observed that the species P. jackbeardsleyi reported in the GenBank (NCBI) showed no association with any of the sequences of the study; therefore this research presents the first record of P. jackbeardsleyi in Costa Rica.