[Genetic structure of the geographical populations of Athetis lepigone in Shandong Province, China].

Athetis lepigone (Möschler) is a new insect pest of summer corn in Huang-Huai-Hai Region of China. To understand the spread and damage of this insect pest in Shandong Province, we analyzed the genetic structure of the A. lepigone populations collected from 12 counties and one morphologically alike species from Weihai using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (mtCOI, 608 bp) gene. The results showed that there were 24 mtCOI haplotypes generated from 130 sequences of A. lepigone and 2 haplotypes from 7 sequences of morphologically alike species of A. lepigone. The haplotype network and phylogenetic tree showed that the populations in the study formed two distinct groups, i. e., the population of Weihai (WH) and the other populations. The two groups were significantly differentiated and the genetic distance between them was 0.044-0.054. Molecular variance (AMOVA) analysis showed that a high proportion of the total genetic variance was attributed to variations among groups, indicating that there was no obvious population expansion among A. lepigone populations in this province. The study provided the scientific basis for the forecasting and prevention of the insect pest.