Preliminary Investigation of Species Diversity of Rice Hopper Parasitoids in Southeast Asia

Ongoing intensification of rice production systems in Southeast Asia is causing devastating yield losses each year due to rice hoppers. Their continuing development of immunity to resistant rice varieties and pesticide applications further complicates this problem. Hence, there is a high demand for biological control agents of rice hoppers. Egg parasitoid wasps are among the most important natural enemies of rice hoppers, such as Nilaparvata lugens and Nephotettix spp. However, our knowledge of their diversity is still very limited, due to their small size and the lack of available morphological information. Classifying these parasitoids is the first step to properly understanding their role in the rice agroecosystem. We used traditional morphological identification, as well as DNA sequencing of the 28S rRNA and the COI genes, to investigate the diversity of four important hopper egg parasitoid genera in the Philippines. Parasitoids of the genera Anagrus, Oligosita, Gonatocerus, and Paracentrobia were collected in eight study landscapes located in Luzon. Our findings illustrate that characterization of species diversity using morphological and molecular analyses were concordant only for the genus Paracentrobia. The genera Anagrus and Gonatocerus exhibited more genetic diversity than estimated with the morphological analysis, while the opposite was observed for Oligosita. This is the first study investigating the molecular diversity of rice hopper parasitoids in the Philippines. More research combining morphological, behavioral, and molecular methods, as well as the establishment of a comprehensive DNA database, are urgently needed to assess the performance and suitability of these organisms as biocontrol agents.