Distribuição potencial de scirtothrips dorsalis (hood) (thysanoptera: thripidae) nas américas

Abstract

Scirtothrips dorsalis (Hood) (Thysanoptera:Thripidae) is an invasive pest, popularly known as chili thrips. This insect pest has a high range of hosts distributed in 72 plant families, causing damage to numerous crops of great economic importance, such as pepper, mango and cotton. In the Americas, it is officially present in the United States of America, Mexico, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia and some Caribbean islands. Its invasion in other American countries, in particular Brazil (where there has already been an occurrence), could result in great losses in agricultural production, in addition to possible other environmental damages. Knowing the regions where there are environmentally suitable conditions for the pest is important for phytosanitary monitoring and inspection. Thus, the objective was to project the geographic areas with potential for the distribution of S. dorsalis in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil. Models were produced to design this distribution, in which the environmental variables used were made available by Wordclim version 2.1. The algorithms used for the modeling were the Generalized Additive Model (GAM), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Maximum Entropy (MAXENT), Random Forest (RF) and Bioclim, in addition to the Ensemble that consists of the grouping of the algorithms used. The metrics used to evaluate the models were the AUC, the TSS and the Sorensen. The models were generated in the R Environment, using the ENMTML package and the maps were produced in Arcmap (ARCGIS 10.5). All models had satisfactory results (>0.8) in all metrics used. In North America the model showed favorable regions in the west coast of the USA and in the east coast until near New York. In South America, the potential distribution of the pest is more significant, encompassing regions in all countries. In Brazil, the northwest of the state of Amazonas, part of the Northeast, and a region on the border of Pará and Mato Grosso were the locations with low climatic suitability. It is concluded that S.dorsalis is able to establish itself in the three American subcontinents and, in particular, a large part of South America.