Diverse strains of aster yellows phytoplasma are associated with the potato leafhopper ( <i>Empoasca fabae</i> ) in Eastern Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Phytoplasmas are cell wall–less bacteria that are transmitted by phloem-feeding insects. In Canada, insect vectors of this pathogen are leafhoppers (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), and they can contribute to significant economic losses. As climate change alters the composition and movement of insect communities, migratory species such as the potato leafhopper ( Empoasca fabae , Harris 1841), one of the most abundant leafhoppers in Québec, may play an emerging role in phytoplasma diseases. Although E. fabae is not currently confirmed to act as a vector, its frequent presence and abundance in fields, along with its potential to acquire phytoplasmas, deserve further investigation. In this study, we tested DNA from E. fabae collected in strawberry fields for the presence of ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma’ using PCR, as well as inbred colonies for their ability to transmit this pathogen. The amplicons amplified from positive samples were cloned and sequenced to identify phytoplasma groups and subgroups. Our findings confirmed the presence of multiple Aster Yellows (16SrI-related) phytoplasma strains in E. fabae , based on phylogenetic analysis, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) profiling, and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiles. However, the transmission assays did not show vector competence. We propose that although this leafhopper species hosts multiple, possibly new, phytoplasma subgroups, its capacity to transmit the disease remains limited and likely depends on high population density. Overall, these findings emphasize the importance of monitoring common pests like E. fabae as indicators of phytoplasma diversity in Eastern Canadian agricultural systems.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".