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ViewAttendees 5

10-Minute Paper

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

P-IE: Vectors of Plant Diseases

Molecular gut content analysis reveals patterns of plant-aphid vector associations relevant for Potato Virus Y epidemiology

Wednesday, November 8, 2023
4:18 PM – 4:30 PM ET
Location: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor 3
In-Person
Potato virus Y (PVY) is an important pathogen of potato and other crops that is transmitted in a non-persistent manner by more than 65 species of aphids. Aphids disperse across a landscape to colonize new host plants and will often probe on a wide variety of non-host plant species before settling on a host suitable for reproduction. However, there is limited understanding of the diversity of plants which individual aphids probe on within a landscape. Here, we use high throughput molecular gut content analysis (GCA) to characterize plant-aphid vector associations. Aphids were trapped weekly during the growing seasons of 2020 and 2021. High-throughput sequencing of plant barcoding genes, trnF and ITS2, from 200 individual alate (i.e., winged) aphids representing nine vector species was performed using the PacBio sequencing platform, and sequences were identified to genus using NCBI BLASTn. We found that 34.7% of individual aphid vectors probed upon plant genera that are presumed to be capable of sustaining PVY infection and that aphid vectors frequently probed upon plants that are outside of their reported host ranges. Two of the most frequently detected plant genera, Solanum and Brassica, represent important crops and weeds within the study region and are presumed PVY host plants. Additionally, the aphid vector Capitophorus elaeagni probed upon several weed genera that are presumed PVY host plants. This study provides the first use of high throughput molecular GCA with aphids and documents host use patterns that are relevant for PVY epidemiology.