DNA Barcoding of Docotettix cornutus Ribaut, 1948 (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)

Docotettix cornutus Ribaut 1948 (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) is a species that can cause economic damage to crops such as tomato, olive, pomegranate, and maize and is distributed worldwide. Since morphological identification is very difficult due to the small size of this pest there is a lack of experts and no record of molecular identification, DNA barcoding was aimed. In this study, D. cornutus was collected from pomegranate orchards in Aydın, İzmir and Manisa provinces (Türkiye) using Japanese umbrellas and suction tubes. After morphological identification of the species, HCO/ LCO universal primers were used to amplify the COI gene region of the specimen, and healthy reads were made between 499 bp (SE05) and 675 bp (SE07). Sequence analysis of the specimen was performed by Triogen Biotechnology (Istanbul-Türkiye). D. cornutus was registered in Genebank for the first time and a GeneBank accession number was obtained. When the specimens were compared with other registered specimens in the BLAST module at NCBI, it was seen that the closest species to D. cornutus was Synophropsis lauri.