The taxonomy of the Bemisia tabaci cryptic species group has been challenging owing to the absence of morphological differentiation and potentially porous species boundaries. And whether B. tabaci consists of several species in evolutionary stasis with limited morphological change or has evolved as the result of recent adaptive radiations characterized by ecological diversity with minimal to no morphological divergence, is unclear. Here, a historical overview of the nomenclature used for classifying B. tabaci is presented including post synonymization of several species in 1957, to recent insights, gained from nuclear genome sequencing data and climate micro niche analyses. The limitations associated with the previously proposed 3.5% mtCOI threshold has grossly overestimated the number of extant species. Thus, the recently demonstrated 1% nuclear divergence cutoff better reflects ecological and biogeographic species boundaries and predicted barriers to gene flow.
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