Determination of genetical differences in Turkish populations of Eurygaster austriaca Schrk. (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Scutelleridae)

In this thesis work, it was aimed to find out genetical differences of Eurygaster austriaca Schrk. populations collected from cultivated areas of 17 provinces across Turkey by using 14 different AFLP molecular marker primer combinations. In order to conduct studies concerning genetic variability of pest (E. austriaca), genotyping protocol was slightly modified. There were no genome information available for the pest so amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique was chosen since it does not depend on any prior sequence information of the samples and also is a sensitive and reliable technique. As a result of molecular studies, while the highest polymorphism was 45.4% in the Uşak population, the lowest polymorphism rate was 17.7% in the Bursa population. The highest polymorphism rate (86.8%) was obtained by using EcoRI ATT - MseI CGG primer combination. The lowest polymorphism rate (53.9%) was obtained by using EcoRI ACC - MseI CCC primer combination.As a result of the AMOVA analysis, the variation value was found as 23.08% among the populations and 76.91% within the populations. The PhiST value was 0.23. Genetic differentiation between populations, neighbor joining and UPGMA dendrograms have identified differentiation of the populations. In terms of visuality, Principle Coordinate Analysis has clearly demonstrated the groupings of populations.