Occurrence data for the two cryptic species of Cacopsylla pruni (Hemiptera: Psylloidea)
Authors: Sauvion Nicolas , Peccoud Jean , Meynard Christine , Ouvrard David 
Published: July 2021

Cacopsylla pruni is a psyllid that has been known since 1998 as the vector of the bacterium ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum’, responsible for the European stone fruit yellows (ESFY), a disease that affects species of Prunus. This disease is one of the major limiting factors for the production of stone fruits, most notably apricot (Prunus armeniaca) and Japanese plum (P. salicina), in all EU stone fruit-growing areas. The psyllid vector is widespread in the Western Palearctic and evidence for the presence of the phytoplasma that it transmits to species of Prunus has been found in 15 of the 27 EU countries.

Recent studies showed that C. pruni is actually composed of two cryptic species that can be differentiated by molecular markers. A literature review on the distribution of C. pruni was published in 2012, but it only provided presence or absence information at the country level and without distinction between the two cryptic species.

Since 2012, numerous new records of the vector in several European countries have been published. We ourselves have acquired a large amount of data from sampling in France and other European countries. We have also carried out a thorough systematic literature review to find additional records, including all the original sources mentioning C. pruni (or its synonyms) since the first description by Scopoli in 1763. Our aim was to create an exhaustive georeferenced occurrence catalogue, in particular in countries that are occasionally mentioned in literature with little detail. Finally, for countries that seem suitable for the proliferation of C. pruni (USA, Canada, Japan, China etc.), we dug deeper into literature and reliable sources (e.g. published checklists) to better substantiate its current absence from those regions.

Information on the distribution ranges of these vector psyllids is of crucial interest in order to best predict the vulnerability of stone fruit producing countries to the ESFY threat in the foreseeable future.

We give free access to a unique file of 1975 records of all occurrence data in our possession concerning C. pruni, that we have gathered through more than twenty years of sampling efforts in Europe or through intensive text mining.

We have made every effort to retrieve the source information for the records extracted from literature (1201 records). Thus, we always give the title of the original reference, together with the page(s) citing C. pruni and, if possible, the year of sampling. To make the results of this survey publicly available, we give a URL to access the literature sources. In most cases, this link allows free downloads of a PDF file.

We also give access to information extracted from GBIF (162 exploitable data points on 245 occurrences found in the database), which we thoroughly checked and often supplemented to make the information more easily exploitable.

We give access to our own unpublished georeferenced and genotyped records from 612 samples taken over the last 20 years in several European countries (Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain etc.). These include two countries (Portugal and North Macedonia), for which the presence of C. pruni had not been reported before. As our specimens have been genotyped (74 sites with species A solely, 202 with species B solely and 310 with species A+B), our new data enable a better overview of the geographical distribution of the two cryptic species at the Palaearctic scale.