Conservation of natural populations and handling of breeding programs would benefit from the availability of molecular markers. Stingless bees are one of the most important pollinators in several ecosystems. Thus, seventeen microsatellite markers were developed from an enriched genomic library of Nannotrigona testaceicornis. They were characterized using 50 samples. The expected and observed heterozygosities ranged from 0.59 to 0.89 and from 0.39 to 0.79, respectively. These markers will contribute to advance researches on the genetic conservation, characterization and preservation of the Brazilian native bees.

Questionário de meliponicultura (Abelhas sem ferrão) (https://questionarios.ufmg.br/index.php/141499?lang=pt-BR)Olá! Somos pesquisadores da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais -UFMG e estamos avaliando as principais doenças em abelhas no Brasil. Sua contribuição será essencial para guiar a comunidade científica em busca de soluções dos principais problemas que afetam a saúde das abelhas. Você só precisa dizer o seu nome, se quiser. Nenhuma informação pessoal será divulgada. Caso não se sinta à vontade com algumas perguntas, você tem a opção de não responder e passar para a próxima. Você poderá desistir ou editar suas respostas e isto não acarretará nenhum tipo de prejuízo, dano ou constrangimento. E só levará cinco minutos do seu tempo para responder esse questionário. Daremos um retorno dos resultados dessa pesquisa por e-mail e pelas associações e cooperativas participantes.Esse questionário tem fins apenas acadêmicos e não tem nenhum interesse comercial ou político.Agradecemos muito a sua colaboração voluntária! Ajude-nos a ajudar você e a todo o país com a produção de alimento, geração de renda e conservação da biodiversidade.Antes de começar, declare aqui o seu consentimento de participação.

The Meliponini, also known as stingless bees, are distributed in tropical and subtropical areas of the world and plays an essential role in pollinating many wild plants and crops These bees can build nests in cavities of trees or walls, underground or in associations with ants or termites; interestingly, these nests are sometimes found in aggregations. In order to assess the genetic diversity and structure in aggregates of Nannotrigona testaceicornis (Lepeletier), samples of this species were collected from six aggregations and genetically analyzed for eight specific microsatellite loci. We observed in this analysis that the mean genetic diversity value among aggregations was 0.354, and the mean expected and observed heterozygosity values was 0.414 and 0.283, respectively. The statistically significant Fis value indicated an observed heterozygosity lower than the expected heterozygosity in all loci studied resulting in high homozygosis level in these populations. In addition, the low number of private alleles observed reinforces the absence of structuring that is seen in the aggregates. These results can provide relevant information about genetic diversity in aggregations of N. testaceicornis and contribute to the management and conservation of these bees’ species that are critical for the pollination process.

Tetragona Lepeletier & Serville, 1828 (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is a genus of stingless bees widely distributed in Brazil. It has 15 species distributed in the Neotropics, from Mexico to Uruguay, nine of which are found in Brazil. However, Tetragona elongata (Lepeletier & Serville, 1828), a species known only from the Southeast region and which had been synonymized with Tetragona clavipes (Fabricius, 1804), was revalidated without any justification. The aim of this study was to test whether the morphometrics analysis of the wings is efficient in the diagnosis of the species of this genus, in addition to testing the validity of the revalidation mentioned above. This technique was applied by accessing the right forewings of 660 workers of T. clavipes, T. elongata e T. quadrangula (Lepeletier, 1836), from five Brazilian collections. For the geometric morphometric analysis, 12 landmarks were selected. The software MorphoJ version 1.6 was used to do Discriminant Function analysis (1000 replications) and Canonical Variation Analysis (CVA). Between T. clavipes and T. elongata, there was a 100% variance between species (canonical variation analysis), suggesting that it may be an indication of speciation. Even though T. elongata has been revalidated, it still has overlapped with T. clavipes, which indicates to be the same species. Taxonomic studies are needed to synonymize them.