Utilisation of a mitochondrial intergenic region for species differentiation of fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in South Africa

BACKGROUND: Fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) comprise species of agricultural and economic importance. Five such fruit fly species are known to affect commercial fruit production and export in South Africa: Ceratitis capitata, Ceratitis cosyra, Ceratitis rosa, Ceratitis quilicii, and Bactrocera dorsalis. Management practices for these pests include monitoring, application of pest control products, post-harvest disinfestation measures and inspection of consignments both prior to shipment and at ports of entry. In activities relating to monitoring and inspection, accurate identification of these pests to species level is required. While morphological keys for adult stages of these fruit fly species have been well developed, morphological keys for earlier life stages remain problematic. In instances where closely related species cannot be reliably distinguished morphologically, there is a need for molecular tools to assist in identifying these five fruit fly species during surveillance practices, where sequencing-based approaches would be beneficial. RESULTS: Two complete mitochondrial genomes were assembled for each fruit fly species investigated using high throughput sequencing data generated in this study. A single primer set was designed to amplify a region between tRNA(ile) and tRNA(met). The amplicon consists of a partial segment of tRNA(ile), intergenic region I (tRNA(ile) - tRNA(gln)), the complete sequence of tRNA(gln), intergenic region II (tRNA(gln) - tRNA(met)), and a partial segment of tRNA(met). PCR amplicons were generated for 20 specimens of each species, five of which were colony adult males, five colony larvae, and 10 wild, trap-collected specimens. Upon analysis of the amplicon, intergenic region I was identified as the most informative region, allowing for unambiguous identification of the five fruit fly species. The similarity in intergenic region II was too high between C. rosa and C. quilicii for accurate differentiation of these species. CONCLUSION: The identity of all five fruit flies investigated in this study can be determined through sequence analysis of the mitochondrial intergenic regions. Within the target amplicon, intergenic region I (tRNA(ile) - tRNA(gln)) shows interspecific variation sufficient for species differentiation based on multiple sequence alignment. The variation in the length of intergenic region I is proposed as a potential tool for accurately identifying these five fruit flies in South Africa. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-022-09038-x.