Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Florida, Lake Alfred, FL.
J Insect Sci. 2020 Mar 1;20(2). doi: 10.1093/jisesa/ieaa016.
Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus Jagoueix, Bové, and Garnier (Rhizobiales: Rhizobiaceae) is transmitted by the psyllid Diaphorina citri Kuwayama and putatively causes Huanglongbing disease in citrus. Huanglongbing has reduced yields by 68% relative to pre-disease yields in Florida. Disease management is partly through vector control. Understanding vector biology is essential in this endeavor. Our goal was to document differences in probing behavior linked to sex. Based on both a literature review and our results, we conclude that there is either no effect of sex or that identifying such an effect requires a sample size at least four times larger than standard methodologies. Including both color and sex in statistical models did not improve model performance. Both sex and color are correlated with body size, and body size has not been considered in previous studies on sex in D. citri in terms of probing behavior. An effect of body size was found wherein larger psyllids took longer to reach ingestion behaviors and larger individuals spent more time-ingesting phloem, but these relationships explained little of the variability in these data. We suggest that the effects of sex can be ignored when running EPG experiments on healthy psyllids.
亚洲韧皮杆菌（Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus Jagoueix, Bové, and Garnier）（根瘤菌目：根瘤菌科）通过柑橘木虱（Diaphorina citri Kuwayama）传播，被怀疑是柑橘黄龙病的病原体。黄龙病使佛罗里达州的柑橘产量比发病前减少了 68%。疾病管理部分通过控制媒介来实现。了解媒介生物学在这方面至关重要。我们的目标是记录与性别相关的探测行为差异。基于文献综述和我们的结果，我们得出结论，要么性别没有影响，要么要确定这种影响，所需的样本量至少是标准方法的四倍。在统计模型中同时包含颜色和性别并没有提高模型性能。性别和颜色都与体型相关，而体型在以前关于柑橘木虱性别的探测行为研究中没有被考虑在内。我们发现体型大小存在影响，较大的木虱需要更长的时间才能进入取食行为，较大的个体在取食韧皮部时花费的时间更多，但这些关系仅能解释这些数据中很小一部分的变异性。我们建议，在对健康木虱进行 EPG 实验时，可以忽略性别的影响。
