Abstract: Five Anoplophora sibling species and eight geographical populations of the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB), Anoplophora glabripennis (Motsch.) collected from China and the USA were analyzed using the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method. A total of 51 random primers (20 OPH, 20 OPL, 11 OPQ kits) were selected,of the 40 primers used in primer group Ⅰ, 26 primers produced polymorphic bands in phylogeny analyses of Anoplophora species and A.glabripennis populations. In primer group Ⅱ, 19 of the 31 primers produced polymorphic bands in A. glabripennis population analyses. Based on the computer-generated RAPD cladogram using primer group Ⅰ, eight geographical populations of A. glabripennis and two populations of A. nobilis can be grouped in one phylogenic cluster that is different from the other Anoplophora species. Six geographical populations of A. glabripennis in China form a cluster branch, which can be divided into two sub-branches: one sub-branch consists of populations from the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Nei Mongol, and Ningxia, and the other consists of A. glabripennis population from Gansu Province. The two A. glabripennis populations from New York and Chicago can be considered as an independent branch of a cluster with 0.2525 genetic distances between them. Similar results were also obtained with A. glabripennis geographical populations using primer group Ⅱ. These results indicated that the specimens of A. glabripennis populations collected from the USA were somewhat different genetically from specimens collected from some parts of China. The cladogram showed that A. nobilis populations from Gansu and Ningxia were mixed with the A. glabripennis cluster with little difference between the two species, which strongly supports the findings that the two may in fact be a single species.

Key words: Anoplophora, A. glabripennis, A. nobilis; population, RAPD, genetic distance