Can molecules solve the bemisia conundrum when morphology cannot?
Raymond J. Gill California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, CA, USA. Correspondence: rgill@cdfa.ca.gov Bemisia tabaci has a number of synonyms produced partly due to the extreme plasticity of the pupal stages. And even though the mechanisms for the pupal variability are now largely understood, as are the limits of this variability within some generic groupings, we still do not understand the relationships of the general morphology of whiteflies to species limits, or even to generic limits. Early work by Laurence Mound and Louise Russell showed that whitefly pupal morphology could be morphologically altered by environmental factors at least in the genera Bemisia and Trialeurodes. Further studies have shown variable pupal morphology to be common in many other genera, at least within the whitefly subfamily Aleurodinae. Current molecular studies are beginning to shed some light on a few morphological structures that could be reliable generic and specific characters for some
