State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, Guangdong, China.
Department of Crop Protection, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
BMC Evol Biol. 2018 Mar 27;18(1):36. doi: 10.1186/s12862-018-1158-5.
Introduced biological control agents have opportunities of population admixture through multiple introductions in the field. However, the importance of population admixture for their establishment success often remains unclear. Previous studies based on genetic markers have suggested a history of population admixture in the predatory ladybird Cryptolaemus montrouzieri Mulsant in China.
We tested whether population admixture may lead to fitness changes under laboratory conditions. We first found no mating barrier or strong bias between two parental populations, despite their differences in genetics and phenotypes. Then, our experimental evidence supported the hypothesis that admixed populations have a higher potential of establishment success, due to their superior reproductive ability, and hunger and cold tolerance inherited from one of the parental populations.
We suggest that population admixture can be a breeding method to improve the performance of biological control agents, particularly when used in a classical biological control approach, but that consequences for potential invasiveness need to be considered.
引入的生物防治剂在田间通过多次引入有机会发生种群混合。然而，种群混合对其建立成功的重要性往往不清楚。先前基于遗传标记的研究表明，在中国捕食性瓢虫 Cryptolaemus montrouzieri Mulsant 中存在种群混合的历史。
我们测试了种群混合是否会导致实验室条件下的适应性变化。我们首先发现，尽管两个亲本种群在遗传和表型上存在差异，但它们之间没有交配障碍或强烈的偏倚。然后，我们的实验证据支持了这样的假设，即混合种群由于其优越的繁殖能力以及从一个亲本种群继承的饥饿和耐寒性，具有更高的建立成功潜力。
我们建议，种群混合可以作为一种繁殖方法来提高生物防治剂的性能，特别是在采用经典生物防治方法时，但需要考虑潜在入侵的后果。
