Molecular markers as a tool for population and evolutionary studies of stingless bees

Abstract

-Molecular markers are widely used in biology to address questions related to ecology, genetics and evolution. In bees, molecular studies addressing those issues have focused on Apis and Apis mellifera. Here we describe examples where molecular markers from mtDNA and microsatellite analyses were applied to stingless bees species. The data obtained, although in some cases preliminary, have already proven useful to infer hypotheses about phylogeny, population dynamics, species validity and the evolution of this group of bees. stingless bees / molecular marker / mitochondrial DNA / microsatellite / evolution / Apidae / Meliponini

Bee Diversity in Thailand and the Applications of Bee Products

“…Apini and Meliponini are the two tribes that contain members that display a high level of social behavior (Arias et al, 2006). Meliponines are groups of stingless bees whose size, body color and appearance vary greatly.…”

Mitochondrial DNA polymorphism among populations of Meliponaquadrifasciata quadrifasciata Lepeletier (Apidae: Meliponini) from southern Brazil

“…Although Prudentópolis and Mafra are located in areas of Araucaria Forest, the former seems to be isolated as no ecological corridor exists due to Araucaria and Atlantic forest fragmentation. Arias et al (2006) studied populations of the stingless bee Plebeia remota Holmberg and through mtDNA RFLP verifi ed that samples collected from Prudentópolis did not share haplotypes with populations from São Paulo, Santa Catarina and eastern Paraná. Moreover, a multidisciplinary study provided extra evidences based on wing morphology, cuticular hydrocarbons and mtDNA RFLP that P. remota from Prudentópolis should be considered as a distinct species (Francisco et al 2008).…”

“…It is interesting that the COI/COII region of Apis mellifera L. contains an intergenic non-coding region (Crozier et al 1989), which is highly informative to differentiate among A. mellifera geographic races and evolutionary lineages (Garnery et al 1992, 1995, Franck et al 1998. Although this intergenic region was reported as absent in Meliponini (Arias et al 2006), the surrounding genes (COI and COII) revealed polymorphic and exclusive restriction sites between M. quadrifasciata quadrifasciata samples from Paraná and Santa Catarina.…”

“…Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation was also described between subspecies through RFLP analyses (Weinlich et to discriminate between both subspecies based on mtDNA RFLP, reinforcing the importance of describing new molecular markers for subspecies identifi cation and maternal origin, since hybrids can be originated through natural contact or mediated by beekeepers as a consequence of queen or brood combs exchange among different geographic regions. In this paper, we detailed the methodology and discuss the results which were briefl y reported as unpublished data in a review article (Arias et al 2006), focusing in detecting mtDNA polymorphisms among samples of M. q. quadrifasciata from three localities (here called as populations) of southern Brazil in an attempt to identify haplotypes closely associated to geographic sites. Moreover, as an effort to improve the data described by Souza et al (2008), seven mtDNA regions were analyzed and a large number of restriction enzymes were utilized.…”

An optimized method for the generation of AFLP markers in a stingless bee (Melipona quadrifasciata) reveals a high degree of intracolonial genetic polymorphism

“…The significant contribution of workers to male production in many stingless bee species (Tóth et al, 2002(Tóth et al, , 2004Paxton et al, 2003;Velthuis, 2005) in conjunction with a high recombination frequency could represent mechanims that allow maintenance of sufficiently high genetic diversity in even relatively small populations of stingless bees. Even though high recombination rates have so far only been demonstrated for honey bees (Hunt and Page, 1995;Gadau et al, 2001), studies on karyotype (Rocha et al, 2002) and mitochondrial genome evolution (Weinlich et al, 2004;Arias et al, 2006) suggest that stingless bees could harbor rather flexible genomes, as well.…”