Paracoccus hakeae

Genetic distances and generic placement of Ph. hakeae

Molecular analysis showed the COI sequences of 610 base pairs of the Australian and Californian specimens to be identical. The sequenced COI portion of Phenacoccus hakeae differs by 11–15 % from similar sequences of other Phenacoccus species (Ph. aceris (Signoret), Ph. avenae Borchsenius, Ph. baccharidis Williams, Ph. madeirensis Green, Ph. parvus Morrison, Ph. peruvianus Granara de Willink in: Granara de Willink & Szumik, Ph. solani Ferris, Ph. solenopsis Tinsley) and by 9–14 % from those of Paracoccus species (Pa. burnerae (Brain), Pa. ferrisi Ezzat & McConnell or nr., Pa. gillianae von Ellenrieder & Stocks, Pa. marginatus Williams & Granara de Willink) available on GenBank and in the CSCA dataset.

The TaxonID tree-based identification tool in BOLD (Ratnasigham & Hebert 2013) shows Ph. hakeae grouping with Crisicoccus matsumotoi (Siraiwa) (8.5–10 % difference) known from South-East Asia and the Oriental region, and Vryburgia transvaalensis (Brain) (9.9–10 % difference) from southern Africa.

Our Neighbor-Joining analysis performed using available sequences in the CSCA database and some selected sequences from GenBank shows Ph. hakeae grouping with members of the subfamily Pseudococcinae with good support, and in a subgroup including Balanococcus takahashii McKenzie and Crisicoccus matsumotoi with low support. It also shows the genus Phenacoccus forming a separate grouping (Fig. 1), as is expected because Phenacoccus belongs to the subfamily Phenacoccinae (Hardy et al. 2008).