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Evolution of Apis mellifera. (A) Phylogeny representing the three clades of Apis. All of the 10 extant Apis species apart from A. mellifera are found only in Asia. Node I represents the split between A. mellifera and other cavity-nesting bees. Node II represents the most recent common ancestor of extant subspecies of A. mellifera. (B) Three hypotheses that have been proposed for the origin of A. mellifera. (i) An expansion from the Middle East, involving colonization of Europe via two routes, one eastern and one western was first suggested by Ruttner (1978) on the basis of morphometric analyses. (ii) An expansion from the Middle East, which did not involve the western colonization route into Europe was suggested on the basis of trees constructed from mtDNA (Garnery et al. 1992). (iii) An origin in Africa was proposed by Wilson (1971) and an expansion out of Africa via both an eastern and western route was suggested by the analysis of >1000 SNPs by Whitfield et al. (2006). The yellow star corresponds to node II in the upper panel.
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The native range of the honeybee Apis mellifera encompasses Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, whereas the nine other species of Apis are found exclusively in Asia. It is therefore commonly assumed that A. mellifera arose in Asia and expanded into Europe and Africa. However, other hypotheses for the origin of A. mellifera have also been proposed...
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The ability to distinguish feral and managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) has applications in studies of population genetics, parasite transmission, pollination, interspecific interactions, and bee breeding. We evaluated a diagnostic test based on theoretical differences in stable carbon isotope ratios generated by supplemental feeding. We evaluated...
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... Honey bee populations are generally delineated by high intraspecific and intrapopulation diversity, with distinct phenotypic and genetic features documented among different geographic groups [1,7]. Based on the variations among geographical groups, numerous different lineages and "ecotypes" have been defined within A. mellifera [8]. ...
Evaluation and conservation of local genetic resources of the domestic honey bee populations is important, especially in regions with high diversity levels as well as high honey bee colony density. Greece is rich in honey bee biodiversity, hosting several subspecies, with the status of them being, though, doubtful. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the genetic relationships of both stationary and movable honey bee populations, originating from many location throughout Greece. Two molecular markers were utilized, namely, the conserved mitochondrial COI gene and the highly variable complementary sex determination (CSD) gene. Samples were collected from nine distant populations: eight populations from colonies that followed the traditional stationary beekeeping model and one following the modern migratory beekeeping model type, where the hives are transferred from place to place according to the season. Regardless the beekeeping model, all populations were characterized by sufficient genetic diversity indicating no signs of inbreeding or any bottleneck effects. Nevertheless, genetic differentiation and phylogenetic analysis in comparison with haplotypes obtained from GenBank revealed a genetic admixture pattern suggesting that movement causes genetic homogeneity, occasionally in the stable reared populations as well. Interestingly, two populations, namely, Kastoria and Protokklisi, belonging to A. m. macedonica population, were significantly differentiated, supporting the maintenance of their genetic integrity. Unfortunately, on the other hand, genetic structure of the populations from Crete (Sasalos population) provided evidence that the indigenous breed from the island, A. m. adami, has probably gone extinct. Future management strategies should focus on the conservation of the local genetic resources in which distinct genetic identity has been sustained.
... Considering the extreme rarity of the A lineage mitotypes and the very low probability of an accidental introduction of them in the apiary where they were found, we could not exclude the other hypothesis. The ancestral mitotypes with P 0 sequence that were close to or identical to lineage A may represent relict maternal lines, that have persisted among lineage M populations since the colonization of Western and Northern Europe by honey bees from North Africa via the Iberian peninsula (Han et al., 2012) after the last glaciation, or from earlier genetic exchange with African populations. ...
In Europe, the population of the dark European honey bee Apis mellifera mellifera L. has been significantly affected by the introduction and propagation of non-indigenous subspecies of honey bees. For a long time, the status of the native Lithuanian A. m. mellifera bees was unknown. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the current distribution of the subspecies population in Lithuania and the diversity of its mitotypes. A total of 598 honey bee colonies from traditionally managed apiaries were studied to determine their maternal ancestry using the COI–COII intergenic spacer sequences of mtDNA. The results revealed that 52% of the maternal lines investigated belonged to A. m. mellifera. They represented 20 unique COI–COII intergenic spacer mitotypes, 11 of which were detected for the first time. We hypothesised that a small proportion of ancestral A lineage mitotypes among the dominant M lineage mitotypes could be the relict of the maternal line.
... This has led to the development of molecular genetic research, conducted under the guidance of Metlytska et al. (2010, 2011), Papp et al. (2017b and Cherevatov et al. (2019). Recent studies confirmed that the Carpathian bee belongs to the evolutionary lineage C (Fan Han et al., 2012), derived from and representing an ecotype formed as a result of the eastward expansion of this subspecies into the Carpathian Mountains. Simultaneously, determining the subspecies of different populations of Ukrainian steppe bees requires additional research. ...
Today, there are no systematic studies on the wing phenotypes of drone populations of the honeybee widespread in Ukraine. Considering that drone genomes are haploid, this allows one to establish the correspondence between the phenotype and the drone genome, thereby roughly determining the queen's genome in the part responsible for the wing phenotype. This partially compensates for the lack of resources among domestic scientists to conduct genetic research on bees. The aim of the study was to examine the wings of drones from several apiaries in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, and Zhytomyr regions, identify typical phenotypes, and attempt their taxonomic identification. Using discriminant analysis, 4640 drone wings were classified into three clusters. A two-step scheme for forming significantly different phenotype clusters of wings was proposed. Initially, based on the similarity of Euclidean distances and Mahalanobis distances (<2.6) between clusters, three groups were obtained, which, for refinement, underwent a second classification. As a result, average values and confidence intervals of eight morphometric traits were established: Ci, Dbi, Disc.sh, Pci, Ri, Ci.3, Ci.2.1, Ci.2.2 for the three wing groups. It is suggested to accept the trait values of these groups as reference data: one as a local population of the A. m. carnica subspecies, and the other two as regional standards for Ukrainian bees. Based on the obtained standards, a significant presence of A. m. carnica subspecies bees was established in all studied apiaries, except for the apiary with the status of a breeding ground for Ukrainian steppe bees (Kuzemin village, Sumy region), where such presence is minimal. This fact indicates the need for special measures to reproduce and expand the ranges of existence of local populations of Ukrainian steppe bees. The example of creating local and regional morphometric standards provided in this work is specifically designed to address this issue.
... Thus, it is unlikely that the size-thermal tolerance relationship results from evolutionary processes. Instead, it is more likely attributed to gene flow and adaptation to environmental conditions, considering the relatively short history of A. mellifera on the American continent, in contrast to its much longer evolutionary presence in Asia, Europe, and Africa (Harrison & Fewell, 2002;Han et al., 2012). ...
The objective of this study was to determine the critical thermal minimum
[CTmin], critical thermal maximum [CTmax], and thermal tolerance range of
A. mellifera at three different elevations located in the Mexican Transition
Zone: 11; 1,324, and 3,304 m.a.s.l. In general, we found that the CTmin of A.
mellifera was lower at the site with the highest elevation (i.e., they tolerate
colder temperatures). At the same time, the CTmax remained constant across
the three studied elevations, revealing higher plasticity for cold tolerance
rather than heat. Moreover, we did not find evidence that the body mass
of the individuals was associated with their thermal tolerance at any of the
three sampled elevations. Our findings suggest processes of local adaptation
of A. mellifera populations in environmentally contrasting sites, allowing them
to expand their range of distribution, which could be useful in predicting
responses to future environmental change.
... Managed kiwifruit pollination is largely achieved with the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera), ironically the only Apis species whose native range does not overlap with Actinidia (Han et al. 2012). Managed bumble bees (Bombus spp.) have also been used to successfully pollinate kiwifruit (Cutting et al. 2018). ...
... We used the Western honey bee, A. mellifera, as a model pollinator for our floral choice experiment. Western honey bees are native to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East (Han et al. 2012), and were introduced to Australia in 1822. They are widespread across Australia and are used as crop pollinators due to their generalist foraging diet. ...
Floral displays often signal the presence of nectar, but nectar may not always be present due to previous visits by nectarivores or temporal changes in nectar availability. But how does the presence of empty flowers impact the preferences of foraging honey bees for the available flowers? We aimed to test if previously rewarding flowers changed the preference relationship between neighboring flowers, and if empty flowers impacted overall visitation, in the honey bee Apis mellifera. Using artificial flowers, we showed that although empty flowers did not influence foraging choices in A. mellifera workers, empty flowers did increase movement between flowers in the patch. The presence of empty flowers also resulted in increased rates of patch abandonment. Our results suggest that while empty flowers may not directly impact foraging preferences in bees, they can have an impact on visitation within patches and in the surrounding area, with possible knock-on effects for the pollination of both the emptied flower and neighboring plants.
... Apis mellifera (European honey bee; Apidae) is native to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe (Han et al., 2012) and is now widely introduced around the world. It was first introduced into Australia in 1822 (Hopkins, 1911), and apiaries for commercial honey production, agricultural pollination services, and queen breeding remain common (Clarke & Le Feuvre, 2021). ...
The detection of rare taxa, crucial to conservation and biosecurity, presents many challenges that emerging technologies have the potential to address or avoid. Analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) is a promising tool for the detection of rare species, especially when applied in a way that exploits natural processes to accumulate biological material (natural aggregation). This study investigated the potential of using honey bees as aggregators of pollen eDNA to detect Chrysanthemoides monilifera subsp. monilifera (boneseed), an introduced species targeted for eradication in Western Australia. We developed a species‐specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐based assay that detected boneseed pollen at levels as low as 70 grains per million in a constructed pollen mixture. The assay was successfully used on wild‐caught bees from large boneseed populations, confirming they collect boneseed pollen. However, our results did not detect boneseed DNA in honey bee pollen collected from hive pollen traps near isolated boneseed plants. We hypothesize that a combination of low abundance of boneseed individuals, vast alternative flower resources at the time of boneseed flowering, and honey bee behavior and ecology may have led to lack of detection. We propose ways in which future work using honey bees to detect rare species can be improved. We also outline how other eDNA substrates (e.g., air and water samples) could be used with the PCR assay we have developed. More broadly, our work highlights the potential of eDNA techniques to detect rare species in biosecurity and conservation contexts and contributes to the development of pollinator‐based detection.
... Global-scale genome analyses revealed the evolutionary history and local adaptation of different lineages of A. mellifera (Han et al., 2012;Wallberg et al., 2014;Whitfield et al., 2006). For instance, candidate genes for adaptation to high altitude (Wallberg et al., 2017), temperature (Chen et al., 2016), precipitation, longitude and latitude (Henriques et al., 2018), and social parasitism (Wallberg et al., 2016) have been detected. ...
We examine the population genetic structure and divergence among the regional populations of the Japanese honeybee, Apis cerana japonica , by re‐sequencing the genomes of 105 individuals from the three main Japanese islands with diverse climates. The genetic structure results indicated that these individuals are distinct from the mainland Chinese A. cerana samples. Furthermore, population structure analyses have identified three genetically distinct geographic regions in Japan: Northern (Tohoku‐Kanto‐Chubu districts), Central (Chugoku district), and Southern (Kyushu district). In some districts, “possible non‐native” individuals, likely introduced from other regions in recent years, were discovered. Then, genome‐wide scans were conducted to detect candidate genes for adaptation by two different approaches. We performed a population branch statistics (PBS) analysis to identify candidate genes for population‐specific divergence. A latent factor mixed model (LFMM) was used to identify genes associated with climatic variables along a geographic gradient. The PBS max analysis identified 25 candidate genes for population‐specific divergence whereas the LFMM analysis identified 73 candidate genes for adaptation to climatic variables along a geographic gradient. However, no common genes were identified by both methods.
... Apis mellifera is divided into several subspecies distributed across the native range in Europe, Africa and western Asia, based on their morphology, genetics, behaviour, ecology and physiology (Han et al., 2012;Hepburn & Radloff, 1998;Mumoki & Crewe, 2021;Ruttner, 1988). We here report on the non-suitability of reference genes published for workers of European A. mellifera sampled in Halle (Saale), Germany (mix of at least three subspecies) (Dobritzsch et al., 2019) for studies using workers of the African subspecies A. mellifera scutellata sampled in Pretoria, South Africa. ...
Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is a method widely used to determine changes and differences in gene expression. As target gene expression is most often quantified relative to the expression of reference genes, the validation of suitable reference genes is of critical importance. In practice, however, such validation might not be thoroughly conducted if the same species and the same tissue or body parts are used for qPCR experiments. Here we show, that qPCR reference genes published for workers of European honey bee (Apis mellifera) subspecies fail to be stably expressed in workers of the African subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata. This is the case even when the sampled workers are in the same life stage, the same organ was dissected and the same reagents were used. Thus, reference genes need to be thoroughly re-tested before they can be used as suitable references even when the only thing that changes is the subspecies used.
... Some Actinidia species (in particular, Actinidia deliciosa) located in New Zealand have been the subject of a relatively recent study (Pomeroy and Fisher 2002) showing that, within specific local ecosystems, the kiwifruit production is largely due to the pollination activity of honey bees, mainly Apis mellifera, and bumble bees, mainly Bombus terrestris. Both A. mellifera and B. terrestris are in turn introduced species, since, although now widespread in many parts of the world, the former is probably native to Africa (Whitfield et al. 2006) or Asia (Han et al. 2012), while the latter is probably native to Europe, North Africa, and the Near East (Rasmont et al. 2008). Pomeroy and Fisher (2002) state that the pollination process by B. terrestris is particularly effective for kiwifruit production. ...
A recent idea of “ecosystem health” was introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to draws attention to the fact that ecosystems can become ill because of a reduction of properties such as primary productivity, functions and diversity of interactions among system components. Starting from the 1990s, this idea has been deeply criticized by authors who argued that, insofar as ecosystems show many differences with respect to organismic features, these two kinds of systems cannot share a typical organismic property such as health. In recent years, an organisational approach in philosophy of biology and ecology argued that both organisms and ecosystems may share a fundamental characteristic despite their differences, namely, organisational closure. Based on this kind of closure, scholars have also discussed health and malfunctional states in organisms. In this paper, we examine the possibility of expanding such an organisational approach to health and malfunctions to the ecological domain. Firstly, we will see that a malfunction is related to a lower effectiveness in the functional behaviour of some biotic components with respect to other systemic components. We will then show how some introduced species do not satisfactorily interact in an organisational closure with other ecosystem components, thus posing a threat to the self-maintenance of the ecosystem in which they are found. Accordingly, we will argue that an ecosystem can be said to be healthy when it is a vital environment organisationally grounded on its intrinsic capacity to ensure, under favourable conditions, appropriate functional behaviours for ecosystem components and ecosystem self-maintenance.
