Molecular confirmation of a fourth lineage in honeybees from the Near East

Abstract

-The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 75 honeybee colonies from the Lebanon was characterized by DraI restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the COI-COII intergenic region. The seven observed haplotypes were different enough from all haplotypes already known in Apis mellifera to justify their assignment to a fourth mtDNA lineage. The nucleotide sequence of a 380 base pair (bp) fragment of the NADH2 gene was determined for two haplotypes, which showed a high similarity with two published sequences from A. m. lamarkii and A. m. meda. A microsatellite analysis of a large Lebanese population sample (50 colonies, 8 loci) suggests that Near East populations are also differentiated at the nuclear level from the three previously characterized evolutionary branches of the species A. mellifera.Apis mellifera / mtDNA / microsatellite / evolutionary history / Near East

Industrial apiculture in the Jordan valley during Biblical times with Anatolian honeybees

“…The Western honeybee Apis mellifera is classified into approximately two dozen subspecies that, based on single nucleotide polymorphism (10), morphometric analyses (11), and mitochondrial DNA polymorphism (12), commonly are organized into four major geographically and evolutionary distinct groups: western and northern Europe (M), eastern Europe (C), the Near East and central Asia (O), and Africa (A) (Fig. S4).…”

Geometric morphometrics of the wing as a tool for assigning genetic lineages and geographic origin to Melipona beecheii (Hymenoptera: Meliponini)

“…A similar situation is found in A. mellifera populations along its original geographical distribution, which covers almost all of Africa and Europe and part of Asia (Ruttner 1988). This bee is classified in more than 24 subspecies and the existence of different evolutionary branches is confirmed by several markers, including morphometrics (Ruttner 1988), microsatellites (Estoup et al 1995), mitochondrial DNA (Franck et al 2000) and SNPs in the nuclear DNA (Whitfield et al 2006).…”

Mitochondrial discrimination of honeybees (Apis mellifera) of Sudan

“…They proposed that the species invaded Africa and Europe in three distinct branches, a South and Central African branch (A), a North African and West European branch (M) and a North Mediterranean branch (C). This classification was further refined by adding the fourth biogeographic branch, O, including the Near-and MiddleEastern subspecies (Ruttner, 1988) and later confirmed by mtDNA data (Smith and Brown, 1988;Garnery et al, 1992Garnery et al, , 1993Arias and Sheppard, 1996;Franck et al, 2000b;Franck et al, 2001).…”

“…Restriction with the enzyme Dra I yielded seven different restriction patterns (Fig. 2) (Garnery et al, 1993(Garnery et al, , 1995Franck et al, 1998Franck et al, , 2000aFranck et al, , 2000bFranck et al, , 2001. …”