Franke-Whittle, I.H, O'Shea, M.G, Leonard, G.J., & Sly, L.I. 2004 Molecular investigation of the microbial populations of the pink sugarcane mealybug, Saccharicoccus sacchari.. Annals of Microbiology 54(4): 455-470.

Notes: In an attempt to better understand the microbial diversity and endosymbiotic microbiota of the pink sugarcane mealybug (PSMB) Saccharicoccus sacchari Cockerell (Homoptera: Pseudococcidae), culture-independent approaches, namely PCR, a 16S rDNA clone library, and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE) were used. Previous work has indicated that the acetic acid bacteria Gluconacetobacter sacchari, Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, and Gluconacetobacter liquefaciens represent only a small proportion of the microbial community of the PSMB. These findings were supported in this study by TGGE, where no bands representing G. sacchari, G. diazotrophicus, and G. liquefaciens on the acrylamide gel could be observed following electrophoresis, and by a 16S rDNA clone library study, where no clones with the sequence of an acetic acid bacterium were found. The dominant band in TGGE gels found in a majority of the mealybug samples was most similar, according to BLAST analysis, to the ß-symbiont of the craw mealybug Antonina crawii and to "Candidatus" Tremblaya princeps, an endosymbiont from the mealybug Paracoccus nothofagicola. Mealybugs collected from different areas in Queensland, Australia, were found to produce similar TGGE profiles, although there were a few exceptions. A 16S rDNA clone library based on DNA extracted from a mealybug collected from sugarcane in the Burdekin region in Queensland, Australia, indicated very low levels of diversity among mealybug microbial populations.