In routine potato leafroll virus (PLRV) transmission experiments, clonal populations of green peach aphids vary with respect to the number of plants that become infected after exposure to viruliferous aphids. Rarely does any experiment result in 100% transmission, raising questions as to why some individual clonal aphids do not transmit. Are some individuals incompetent vectors or does aphid behavior, feeding site selection, and/or plant refractoriness to infection limit successful transmission events. Simple serial transfer experiments were conducted using green peach aphid clones that consistently vary in PLRV tranmission efficiency to determine if incompetent individual could be identified. All experiments revealed that transmission efficiency was always less than 100%, but all aphids transmitted PLRV to at least one plant in the transfer series. This indicates that factors other than those involved in vector competence must account for less than 100% transmission efficency.
Species 1: Homoptera Aphididae Myzus persicae (green peach aphid)
Species 2: Luteoviridae Polerovirus (potato leafroll virus)
Keywords: insect vector, plant virus
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