Morphological characterization ofApis ceranain the Yunnan Province of China

Abstract

-Morphological features of Apis cerana Fabr. in Yunnan Province of China were studied using morphometrical methods. Samples of A. cerana were collected from feral colonies in 14 locations of Yunnan Province, covering the main ecological regions. 38 standard morphometric characters recommended by Ruttner et al. (Apidologie 9, 363-381, 1978) were measured. The data were statistically analysed by factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and cluster analysis and compared to samples from the Oberursel data bank from Beijing,

Morphmetric analysis of apis cerana populations in Huangshan, China

“…Moreover, the morphometric characteristics associated with forewing size were significantly negatively correlated to altitude. This result is opposite to those reported by Tan et al (2003), which may be due to the low altitude of all regions where honey bees were collected in their study. Our present discriminant analysis of honey bees from 195 colonies from seven localities in Huangshan revealed the existence of three statistically separable morphometric groups.…”

“…We used Wilks' lambda statistic to test the significant difference between the multiple means of the characteristics entered into the discriminant functions, and Levene's F statistic to detect heterogeneity of variances (Johnson and Wichern, 2007). Lastly, the data for the Huangshan localities were compared to data for Henan , Shandong , and Yunnan (Tan et al, 2003) by hierarchical cluster analysis. All computations were performed using the SPSS 16 statistical package.…”

“…Morphometry combining multivariate analysis is a common method for clarifying honey bee population structure. Multivariate morphometric studies of A. cerana have begun to clarify their population structure in many provinces in China, including Gansu (Tan and Qi, 2004), Hainanisland , Qinghai (Li et al, 2008), Sichuang (Luo and Tan, 2008), Henan , Shandong , and Yunnan (Tan et al, 2003). However, there remains little information about the morphological characters of these bees in the Anhui province.…”

Multivariate morphometric analysis of Apis cerana of southern mainland Asia

“…This is in sharp contrast to the putative thirteen "subspecies" cited in the historical but mutually incompatible literature on A. cerana (Hepburn et al, 2001a). More recently, three additional studies, one on A. cerana of the Hindu-Kush region (Radloff et al, 2005), another for the sub-Himalayan foothills (Hepburn et al, 2001b) and a third from Yunnan Province, China (Ken et al, 2003), provided further refinements to A. cerana morphoclusters in the region. Predictably, differences between these studies and the present results are apparent.…”

“…(3) The raw databases of previously published results for India and Nepal (Singh and Verma, 1993;Singh et al, 1990;Verma et al, 1989;1994;Hepburn et al, 2001b) and for Afghanistan and Pakistan (Radloff et al, 2005) were also incorporated to provide a single database for a complete analysis of the contiguous populations of A. cerana in sub-Himalayan mainland Asia. (4) Similarly, data from recent work on the A. cerana of Yunnan Province (Ken et al, 2003) are included here. The geographical origins of 8424 worker honeybees of A. cerana from 557 colonies at 179 localities used in the current analysis are listed in Table I and shown in Figure 1.…”