IDENTIFICATION OF APHID SPECIES ISOLATED FROM TOMATO CROPS USING PHYLOGENETIC APPROACHES IN RIYADH AND HAFAR AL-BATIN,SAUDI ARABIA

摘要

Aphids are common agricultural pests found worldwide and cause significant economic losses to farmers. Although these pests are of economic im-portance,information on their genome is limited. We examined the sequence diversity of two genes, the mitochondrial gene, subunit I of cytochrome oxidase(COI) and the 16S rRNA-encoding se-quence of aphids sourced from tomato farms from two geographical regions of Saudi Arabia (Rivadh and Hafar Al-Batin).Partial sequences of COI (from 12 aphid isolates)and 16S rRNA-encoding sequence(from five aphid isolates) were separately amplified using polymerase chain reaction and se-quenced to reveal the genomic similarity among specimens of 92-99% and 95.7%,respectively.Our data did not indicate any differences between aphid isolates. These results demonstrate that the present species are deeply embedded in the Aphis genus and share a close relationship with other Aphis spe-cies, including Aphis gossypii as a putative sister taxon. These isolates cannot be categorized as be-longing to two different groups with origins in Ri-yadh and Hafar Al-Batin.