Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2508.12780

Revisiting the systematics of Brevipalpus flat mites (Tenuipalpidae): phylogeny, species groups and cryptic diversity

Renata Santos de Mendonça·Francisco Ferragut·Isis Carolina S. de Oliveira·Aline Daniele Tassi·Felipe Fileni·Ronald Ochoa·Denise Navia
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Phytophagous mites in the genus Brevipalpus (Tenuipalpidae) can be major pests, causing direct damage to their host plants or vectoring viruses. However, a phylogeny-based classification to understand their evolution and predict their bioecological aspects is lacking. Accurate species identification is crucial for studying pathosystem interactions, implementing quarantine measures, and developing control strategies. This study revisited the classification of Brevipalpus based on phylogenetic relationships, identifying cryptic species and determining genetic distance boundaries. A multi-tool exploration of DNA datasets, including mitochondrial (two COI regions) and nuclear (ITS2 and D1-D3) data combined with a detailed morphological study using light and scanning microscopy, was performed. Specimens were collected from 20 host plant families from South America, Europe, and the Middle East. Species were discriminated using three different approaches, namely, Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), Assemble Species by Automatic Partition (ASAP), and a local regression to establish consistent genetic distance thresholds. Results indicate that the current species-group classification only partially matches that based on genetic lineages. Some species currently classified as belonging to the phoenicis and cuneatus species groups were found to be polyphyletic and related to species placed in other species groups. A rearrangement of the species groups to align with the observed genetic lineages is proposed, and phylogenetically informative morphological traits are defined. Cryptic diversity in certain taxa was consistently confirmed by various methods. Nuclear and mitochondrial markers were essential for identifying candidate lineages when morphology alone was insufficient. Nuclear markers detected host-associated lineages within certain species. Inconsistencies between markers and methods suggest the presence of ongoing speciation processes, and hypotheses about speciation events were explored. Intra- and interspecific genetic distances and threshold values were determined for the four studied genomic fragments and can be used for routine taxonomic identification and uncovering cryptic lineages. Further research should combine genetic data, carefully selected markers, and thorough morphological analyses before proposing new species.

Explore related subjects

q-bio.PE

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Renata Santos de Mendonça, Francisco Ferragut, Isis Carolina S. de Oliveira, Aline Daniele Tassi, Felipe Fileni, Ronald Ochoa, Denise Navia. 2025-08-18. Revisiting the systematics of Brevipalpus flat mites (Tenuipalpidae): phylogeny, species groups and cryptic diversity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12780

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Competition drives excessive recruitment in collective search

Groups that search collectively often exploit what they find by recruiting: one member directs others to a site it has found. Recruitment raises the number of members foraging at a known site, but the return per forager may fall as that number grows, so there is an intermediate optimal recruitment rate. In addition, a site may be used by more than one group. Here we analyze a model of two groups that forage from a single site whose return declines with the total number of foragers present. The two groups interact only through this shared return. The long-run outcome is either coexistence at the foraging site or monopoly by one group, and we analyze the boundary between these two outcomes. A group's best response to its rival is not monotone: it increases its own recruitment rate with the rival's recruitment rate in an attempt to preserve a monopoly, and then its recruitment rate drops discontinuously when it is no longer optimal to preserve a monopoly. We analyze how model parameters govern this shift: a group relinquishes monopoly when the site saturates at few foragers and when the rival group is small. When the two groups have comparable size there are multiple Nash equilibria, so either group may end up with the larger share. And when two equally matched groups compete, both recruit above the rate that maximizes their common return, so that each individual ends with less than it would in a single undivided group of the same total size.

q-bio.PE↗
arXiv2026

Selection Rules for Species Coexistence in a Hierarchical May-Leonard Model

One of the central challenges in evolutionary dynamics is understanding why some species combinations persist while others disappear. Although cyclic-interaction models have provided fundamental insights into biodiversity maintenance, much less is known about how hierarchical competitive interactions shape long-term community organization. Here, we investigate a hierarchical extension of the May-Leonard model, in which species interact through a directed predation chain while undergoing reproduction and mortality. Combining mean-field analysis with Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the fully coexisting state is generically unstable, causing the dynamics to evolve toward lower-dimensional coexistence states. The simulations further reveal stochastic extinctions dominating small populations with the dynamics progressively approaching the mean-field predictions as the system size increases. Rather than permitting arbitrary species combinations, the hierarchical-interaction structure dynamically constrains coexistence by selecting only specific subsets of species for long-term persistence. We show that these admissible coexistence states have a natural graph-theoretic interpretation as independent sets in the hierarchical interaction network, thereby providing general constraints on coexistence in hierarchical communities. Together, these results establish a theoretical framework linking hierarchical interactions, dynamical selection, graph topology, and biodiversity organization, extending the classical May-Leonard model beyond cyclic competition.

q-bio.PE↗
arXiv2026

Persistence of n-Species Lotka-Volterra Models with Periodic Pulses

Periodic impulsive interventions arise naturally in the management of biological populations, including chemotherapy, pesticide application, and infectious-disease treatment. We develop general conditions for permanence in n-species population models subject to periodic multiplicative pulse disturbances. Our main result provides a sufficient condition for permanence in terms of weighted long-term growth rates on a Morse decomposition of the extinction set, explicitly separating the contributions of continuous population dynamics from those of the periodic pulse. To establish this result, we transform the impulsive system into an associated autonomous continuous-time dynamical system and use this correspondence to extend classical permanence theory to periodically pulsed models. We further show that the same conditions imply robust permanence under sufficiently small perturbations to the continuous dynamics, pulse period, and pulse effects. We illustrate the framework with two Lotka-Volterra models motivated by biological control: competition between chemotherapy-sensitive and chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells, and integrated control of an agricultural pest using pesticides and parasitoids. These examples demonstrate how intervention frequency and intensity interact with underlying ecological interactions to determine whether populations coexist or are excluded. Our results provide a general framework for analyzing persistence in ecological systems subject to repeated discrete disturbances.

q-bio.PE↗