Abstract
The cotton-melon aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover, an extremely polyphagous
pest insect, comprises of sympatric populations specialized on deferent
host plants. The life history of A. gossypii infesting cucurbit crops
remains elusive because oviparous aphids from overwintering hosts (often
hibiscus) cannot colonize cucurbit crops. We verified that the
hibiscus-specialized lineage (HI) suffered high mortality and gave birth
to very few nymphs developing into yellow dwarfs when transferred to
fresh cucumber because the HI lineage was unable to ingest phloem sap
from fresh cucumber. However, the HI lineage ingested phloem sap
successfully when cucumber leaves were pre-infected with
Pseudoperonospora cubensis, a biotrophic phytopathogen, accompanied by
significant fitness improvement. More surprisingly, the HI lineage with
feeding experience on pre-infected cucumber for two generations
performed as well as the cucumber-specialized lineage (CU) did on fresh
cucumber, and inflicted typical damage symptom to healthy cucumber
plant. This phytopathogen mediated host plant adaptation may be
widespread in polyphagous aphids.