Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood), 1915

Martin, Jon H., 2005, Whiteflies of Belize (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) Part 2 - a review of the subfamily Aleyrodinae Westwood, Zootaxa 1098 (1), pp. 1-116 : 59

Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood)

( Figs 67 , 70–72)

Aleurodes vaporariorum Westwood, 1856: 852 . Syntypes, England.

Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood) Quaintance & Baker, 1915 : xi.

DISTRIBUTION. Cosmopolitan, but less common in Oriental and Austro­Oriental Regions, and usually found under glass in cooler temperate regions.

COMMENTS. T. vaporariorum has long been known as a worldwide pest, particularly of herbaceous crops under glass. This has led to its often­used common name, the glasshouse whitefly. It was assumed by Westwood (almost certainly correctly) to be a New World native, with the descriptive material suspected of having been imported to England from Mexico. The T. vaporariorum ­group is one of Russell’s (1948) North American species assemblages.

Although less notorious than the Bemisia tabaci ­group, T. vaporariorum is nonetheless a serious and widespread pest that causes significant economic damage, especially amongst covered vegetable and foliage crops. This is reflected in a large literature on aspects of this species. Despite being a New World native, there are occasional damaging local population explosions in the region: a recent example involved the near­death of a hedge of Lantana camara on a university campus in Quito, Ecuador in 2005 (personal observations, material in BMNH).

Figures

FIGURE 67, Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood), puparium and captions, after Russell (1948).