DNA barcoding and morphological analysis for rapid identification of most economically important crop-infesting Sunn pests belonging to Laporte, 1833 (Hemiptera, Scutelleridae).

The genus Laporte, 1833 includes ten species five of which inhabit the European part of Russia. The harmful species of the genus is . species identification based on the morphological traits is very difficult, while that of the species at the egg or larval stages is extremely difficult or impossible. , , and differ only slightly between each other morphologically, and being almost indiscernible. DNA barcoding based on COI sequences have shown that differs significantly from these closely related species, which enables its rapid and accurate identification. Based on COI nucleotide sequences, three species of Sunn pests, , , , could not be differentiated from each other through DNA barcoding. The difference in the DNA sequences between the COI gene of and COI genes of and was more than 4%. In the present study DNA barcoding of two species was performed for the first time on , the most dangerous pest in the genus, and that only inhabits natural ecosystems. The PCR-RFLP method was developed in this work for the rapid identification of .