tabaci can affect the insects’ ability to tolerate synthetic pesticides [20, 21]. The diversity and infection Staurosporine status of other world whitefly populations have not been documented. In the framework of a large study to identify the status of whitefly BAY 11-7082 purchase pests in Croatia, we describe the distribution of whitefly populations in that country, their infection status by secondary symbionts, co-infections and spatial localization within the insects’ developmental stages. Interestingly, infection with secondary symbionts and localization patterns in B. tabaci differed in some cases from previously

published results. In T. vaporariorum, this is the first time in which such a study has been reported. Results B. tabaci distribution and infection by secondary symbionts Whitefly collections in Croatia were conducted in 2008-2009. Ten B. tabaci populations (Table 1) were collected only from the coastal part of the country because, surprisingly, B. tabaci was never found inland (the continental part), presumably due to the different climates (Figure 2). Interestingly, testing the collected populations revealed only the Q biotype. One population collected in the

learn more neighboring Monte Negro was identified as B biotype. Twenty individuals from each population were tested for the presence of the different symbionts known from whiteflies using genus-specific primers for each symbiont (Table 2). P. aleyrodidarum, the primary symbiont, was detected in all individuals tested and provided a control for the quality of the extracted DNA. Each box in Figure 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase 3 shows single and mixed infections detected in all of the individuals in a population. For example, the population collected from Turanj on poinsettia plants (population 4 in Table 1) contained only two individuals that were singly infected with Rickettsia, two individuals that harbored only Hamiltonella, one individual that harbored only Wolbachia and three individuals that harbored only Cardinium. This population also contained two individuals that were

doubly infected with Rickettsia and Hamiltonella, one individual that was doubly infected with Wolbachia and Cardinium, one individual that was infected with three symbionts–Rickettsia, Wolbachia and Cardinium, and one individual that showed the highest level of mixed infection with four symbionts–Rickettsia, Hamiltonella, Wolbachia and Cardinium. Among the 20 individuals tested from this location, seven did not contain any of the tested secondary symbionts. Fritschea was not detected in this or any other population tested in this study. Although the population from Turanj showed a high level of mixed infection, with one individual harboring four different symbionts, mixed infections with more than one symbiont were not common in many of the tested populations.