Graduate Student Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
Thrips, Thysanoptera (Paraneoptera), are the sole vectors of the agriculturally damaging virus family; Tospoviridae. Their evolutionary relationship has been debated previously as either being very old, and lost many times, or being very new and rapidly developing new vector relationships. Both hypotheses are unable to predict which species may be, or become, unknown vectors. Recent advances in the phylogenetics of thrips has enabled more statistically reliable association analyses to be undertaken and the cophylogenetics of thrips & tospoviruses to be reinvestigated with modern genomic techniques. Together with the results we present, we discuss the implications of the current hypotheses of this vector-virus relationship.
