Utilisation of a mitochondrial intergenic region for species differentiation of fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in South Africa.

backgroundFruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) comprise species of agricultural and economic importance. Five such fruit fly species are known to affect commercial fruit production and export in South Africa: Ceratitis capitata, Ceratitis cosyra, Ceratitis rosa, Ceratitis quilicii, and Bactrocera dorsalis. Management practices for these pests include monitoring, application of pest control products, post-harvest disinfestation measures and inspection of consignments both prior to shipment and at ports of entry. In activities relating to monitoring and inspection, accurate identification of these pests to species level is required. While morphological keys for adult stages of these fruit fly species have been well developed, morphological keys for earlier life stages remain problematic. In instances where closely related species cannot be reliably distinguished morphologically, there is a need for molecular tools to assist in identifying these five fruit fly species during surveillance practices, where sequencing-based approaches would be beneficial.

resultsTwo complete mitochondrial genomes were assembled for each fruit fly species investigated using high throughput sequencing data generated in this study. A single primer set was designed to amplify a region between tRNA

conclusionThe identity of all five fruit flies investigated in this study can be determined through sequence analysis of the mitochondrial intergenic regions. Within the target amplicon, intergenic region I (tRNA