Finding. The pasture mealybug that is browning grass from Australia to the US now has a COI barcode. The barcode immediately splits the species by about 10.2% into Type A and Type B. Everything in the recent invasion—United States, Australia, Pakistan, Caribbean—sits on one haplotype. Barbados sits on two older, close haplotypes. Regulators finally have a mitochondrial ID that morphology would not give them.
Why this paper matters
Cryptic mealybugs break quarantine. A first barcode plus an invasion-haplotype call is operational mtDNA. It is not an organelle paper.
What they actually measured
COI sequences, distances, networks, phylogeny.
How to read the score
- Confidence is medium-high for the sampled haplotypes.
What to do with it
If you diagnose this pest, use the barcode and watch for the invasion haplotype. Do not average Type A and B biology. The directional implication is that one mitochondrial haplotype rode the recent intercontinental jump.