Morphological discrimination of a tobacco-feeding form from Myzus persicae (Sulzer) (Hemiptera: Aphididae), and a key to New World Myzus (Nectarosiphon) species

Abstract

AbstractMultivariate techniques, principally the method of canonical variates, were used to investigate morphological variation within and between populations of the group of Myzus persicae (Sulzer) from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. The scores on the first canonical variate of samples from tobacco in North America, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Africa and Sri Lanka all grouped consistently when compared with samples from other host-plants, even after aphids from tobacco had been reared for up to seven years on a non-tobacco host. Thus there is a widely-distributed tobacco-adapted form, closely related to M. persicae but with its own characteristic morphology. Morphological discriminants are given for the recognition of apterous and alate viviparae of this tobacco form, which is given the name M. nicotianae sp. n. Both M. persicae and M. nicotianae have 2n = 12, and both are frequently heterozygous for apparently the same autosomal translocation, which they must have acquired independently. M. nicotianae is presumably isolated from M. persicae by being permanently parthenogenetic. In Japan and Central Asia, however, aphids of the M. persicae group on tobacco can produce sexual morphs; the taxonomic status of these latter populations is still unclear. Multivariate comparison of European and North American populations of dark green aphids of the M. persicae group with 13 or 14 chromosomes in somatic cell nuclei instead of the normal 12, led to the conclusion that these all belong to one morphologically variable taxon, M. antirrhinii (Macchiati). Keys are provided to the apterous and alate virginoparae of the species of the M. persicae group in America.