Morphometric Analysis of Populations of Centris aenea Lepeletier (Hymenoptera: Apidae) from Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

Centris aenea Lepeletier is a solitary bee that has raised interest in management to pollinate crops, such as acerola, Malpighia emarginata. This study investigated the level of morphometric variability among populations of C. aenea from Northeastern Brazil. Traditional and geometric morphometric analyses were used. Head length, leg length, wing length, and wing shape were measured in samples (5-10 females) from eight localities. We did not ind statistically signi icant differences among the populations (P > 0.01). The partial wing warps were similar in the populations and indicated that the bees were not morphometrically different. Our results suggest that C. aenea shows low population morphometric variability and highlight the need for further investigations on population variation in this species, preferably including populations sampled at the extremes of their geographic distribution. Signi icant insight into the population variation of C. aenea will probably require the use of molecular markers to allow a comparative approach between morphometric variability and genetic variability.

Mitochondrial DNA variability in populations of Centris aenea (Hymenoptera, Apidae), a crop-pollinating bee in Brazil

“…However, it is still necessary to sequence this fragment in C. aenea and compare it with the available sequences of other bee species, since presence or absence of an intergenic region in the COI/COII fragment can explain a substantial part of the genetic variation observed in different bee genera. In contrast with a morphometric study that showed low population variation in C. aenea (Ferreira et al, 2011), we found intra-and interpopulational variation in C. aenea based on the 8 haplotypes identified thus far.…”

“…The only information available on population variation of C. aenea is a morphometric study (Ferreira et al, 2011), which revealed low population variation. To address this lack of information about the genetic variation in this species, we investigated the levels of genetic differentiation between populations of C. aenea in the northeastern region of Brazil using PCR-RFLP in the COI/COII mitochondrial DNA region.…”

Population Structure of Melipona subnitida Ducke (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini) at the Southern Limit of its Distribution Based on Geometric Morphometrics of Forewings

“…Studies on population structure and geographic variation of bees have been carried out based on morphometric data comparing races or populations (Ferreira et al, 2011;Lima Junior et al, 2012;Nunes et al, 2013). Those analyses are usually based on wing characters due to their high heritability and because they are strongly affected by the environment (Diniz-Filho & Bini, 1994).…”

Seven new species of Lasioglossum (Dialictus) Robertson, 1902 (Hymenoptera: Halictidae: Halictini) from the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico

“…Because bees in L. (Dialictus) are known to be difficult to identify both morphologically (Gibbs 2010) and genetically (Gibbs 2018a), we use two additional morphological character sets which are known to be useful in species delimitation of other bees, but have not earlier LANDAVERDE-GONZÁLEZ P. et al, Seven new species of Lasioglossum (Dialictus) been applied to L. (Dialictus). These are wing shape morphometrics (Francoy et al 2006(Francoy et al , 2011(Francoy et al , 2012(Francoy et al , 2016Ferreira et al 2011) and antennal sensilla . The utility of these characters and associated techniques as delimitation tools in L. (Dialictus) is investigated for the first time.…”