Abstract:

By using specific primer for wsp gene of Wolbachia and PCR method, we investigated the Wolbachia infection of twelve populations of Tetranychus urticae Koch in China. These populations were from Xingcheng in Liaoning Province, Changli in Hebei Province, Changsha in Hunan Province, Zhengzhou in Henan Province, Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province, Lanzhou in Gansu Province, Kunming in Yunnan Province, Tai’an in Shandong Province, Shihezi in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Yinchuan in Ningxia Autonomous Region, Meixian in Shaanxi Province and Shanghai. The results showed that all the populations were infected with Wolbachia. Their sequences were submitted to GenBank and the accession numbers assigned are AY585714, AY585712, AY785376, AY785375, AY585713, AY785374, AY785371, AY712954, AY712955, AY785372, AY785377 and AY785373, respectively. By analyzing the wsp gene sequences of Wolbachia in T. urticae and constituting the phylogenetic tree, we found that they were similar to or completely identical with the wsp gene sequences of some strains of Wolbachia of Ori group in B supergroup. Since the branches of clusters are parallel, there is no evident geographic distribution clustering between different populations.

Key words: Tetranychus urticae, Wolbachia, wspgene, sequence analysis, phylogenetic analysis