BioSense Institute - Research and Development Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems
Published May 24, 2020 | Version v1
Journal article Open

The puzzling mitochondrial phylogeography of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), the commercially most important insect protein species

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus, Zoology unit, University of Helsinki, PO Box 17, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
  • 2. Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Block S3 #05-01, 14 Science Dr 4, Singapore, 117543, Singapore
  • 3. Department of Livestock Sciences, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Ackerstrasse 113, 5070, Frick, Switzerland
  • 4. California Department of Food and Agriculture, Plant Pest Diagnostics Branch, 3294 Meadowview Road, Sacramento, California, 95832-1448, USA
  • 5. BioSense Institute, Dr Zorana Đinđića 1, Novi Sad, 21000, Serbia
  • 6. Department of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources, University of Alicante, PO Box 99, E-03080, Alicante, Spain
  • 7. Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, 2100, Serbia
  • 8. Agriprotein, 1 Rochester Road, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 9. Protenga, 302 Ang Mo Kio Ave 3, #01-1840 560302, Singapore, Singapore
  • 10. Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University, TAMU 2475, College Station, TX, 77843-2475, USA
  • 11. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, TT2 Tietotie 2, P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Espoo, Finland

Description

The black soldier fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae, Hermetia illucens) is renowned for its bioconversion ability of organic matter, and is the worldwide most widely used source of insect protein. Despite varying extensively in morphology, it is widely assumed that all black soldier flies belong to the same species, Hermetia illucens. We here screened about 600 field-collected and cultured flies from 39 countries and six biogeographic regions to test this assumption based on data for three genes (mitochondrial COI, nuclear ITS2 & 28S rDNA) and in order to gain insights into the phylogeography of the species.

Notes

This work was funded by the H2020 Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Programme of the European Commission (RISE), project 645636: 'Insect-plant relationships: insights into biodiversity and new applications' (FlyHigh), and the grants R-154-000-B46–114 and R-154-000-A94–592 to RM, as well as a grant of the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture to CS ('Efficiency and sustainability of the production and feeding of insect based feedstuff to fish and poultry').

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Additional details

Funding

European Commission
FlyHigh - Insect-plant relationships: insights into biodiversity and new applications 645636