Fruit flies cause significant damage to crop and fruit production worldwide. Therefore, it is essential to identify these organisms to species level; however, immature stages are often impossible to be identified morphologically; thus, the application of DNA barcoding has greatly assisted in species identification. Nuclear, mitochondrial pseudo‐COI (NUMT) can be co‐amplified with mitochondrial DNA when using generic primers and therefore impair the efficacy of DNA barcoding. This study detected two types of NUMTs from Bactrocera passiflorae, one of them is novel. Therefore, the new finding will assist future species identification by avoiding misidentification using ambiguous NUMT sequences. In addition, this study has developed primers to target the COI gene of B. passiflorae, not the NUMT copies. The newly designed primers have demonstrated its efficiency in amplifying the Mt‐COI of B. passiflorae and can be used in routine diagnostics.

中文翻译：

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Bactrocera passiflorae (Diptera: Tephritidae) 的分子鉴定：DNA 条形码的挑战和解决方案

果蝇对全世界的作物和水果生产造成重大损害。因此，必须在物种水平上识别这些生物体；然而，不成熟的阶段通常不可能在形态上被识别；因此，DNA条形码的应用极大地帮助了物种鉴定。使用通用引物时，核、线粒体假 COI (NUMT) 可与线粒体 DNA 共同扩增，从而削弱 DNA 条形码的功效。本研究从西番莲中检测到两种类型的 NUMT，其中一种是新的。因此，新发现将通过使用不明确的 NUMT 序列避免错误识别来帮助未来的物种识别。此外，本研究开发了针对西番莲 COI 基因而非 NUMT 拷贝的引物。