Morphometric diversity and phylogenetic relationships among Iranian honey bee (Apis mellifera meda Skorikow, 1829) populations using morphological characters

Abstract

In this study, the morphometric diversity and phylogenetic relationships of Iranian honey bee populations, were investigated using 14 morphometric characteristics. A total of 2250 young adult worker bees from 20 different populations in 20 different provinces of Iran were collected during June to October 2014. The results of nested analysis of variance showed that there were significant differences (P<0.01) between the provinces for all analyzed morphometric traits indicating the existence of a diversity among them. Correlation coefficient analysis showed a high degree of association among the most of the traits. This correlation coefficient should be a putative mean to improve of certain characters in breeding of honey bee. Principal component analysis revealed three principal components explained 81.5% of the total variation. Cluster analysis using WARD method classified honey bee populations into two main groups. The first group includes the honey bees collected from North, Northwest and West portions of Iran. The second group was represented by the honey bees from Eastern North, Central and Southern regions of Iran. The phylogenetic tree based on UPGMA method divided 29 subspecies of honey bee to 5 distinct clusters. The Iranian subspecies honey bee composed of a shared clade with subspecies of Eastern Mediterranean, Near East and Eastern parts of Middle East (O branch).

Genetic Variation in Iranian Honey bees, Apis mellifera meda Skorikow, 1829, (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Inferred from PCR-RFLP Analysis of two mtDNA Gene Segments (COI and 16S rDNA)

“…In a recent study of Iranian honey bee samples, we earlier showed that all honey bee samples then tested belonged to the East Mediterranean (C) lineage as found using several restriction enzymes and morphological characters (Rahimi, 2015b;Rahimi et al, 2017). In the present study, we have used different two mtDNA regions with different samples of the mitochondrial genome to verify the nature and distribution of genetic variation within and between Iranian honey bee populations.…”

“…Honey bee race in this region include the subspecies A. m. meda (Ruttner, 1988). Honey bee subspecies from Iran was studied extensively using morphometric and izoenzymic analysis (Moradi & Kandemir, 2004;Rahimi & Asadi, 2010;Rahimi & Mirmoaydi, 2013;Rahimi et al, 2014a,b;Rahimi et al, 2015a;Rahimi et al, 2017); molecular markers, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis (Rahimi et al, 2014a,b;Rahimi et al, 2015b;Rahimi et al, 2016); microsatellite and RAPD analysis (Royan et al, 2007;Kamrani et al, 2012;Rahimi et al, 2014a,b). More recently, genetic systems such as allozymes (Nunamaker & Wilson, 1982;Badino et al, 1988), nuclear DNA (Hall, 1990;Tarès et al, 1993), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (Moritz et al, 1986;Smith et al, 1989Smith et al, , 1991Hunt & Page, 1992;Garnery et al, 1993;Oldroyd et al, 1995;Arias and Sheppard, 1996;Pedersen, 1996;De la Rùa et al, 2000) and microsatellites (Estoup et al, 1993;Garnery et al, 1998) have been used to study honey bee diversification.…”

Potential honey bee (Apis mellifera) allergens associated with IgE-mediated allergy- An In-silico study

“…To date, no In-silico studies exploring IgEmediated honey bee allergies have been reported so far in the world and the Ha'il region of Saudi Arabia (32). There have already been some studies related to the molecular genetics of honey bees (33)(34)(35). The potential allergens predicted using our immunoinformatic approach can be used to design potential prophylactic peptide vaccine candidates for reducing the allergic response associated with honey bee venom in the Ha'il region of Saudi Arabia and regions/countries (China, Turkey, Canada, United States and India) prone to honey bee attack and farming.…”

İzole bölgelerde korunan Kafkas arısı, Apis mellifera caucasica Pollmann, 1889 (Hymenoptera: Apidae) popülasyonunda genetik varyasyonun azalıp azalmadığına dair bir çalışma

“…Many molecular markers such as restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analyses have been used in honey bee population genetics studies, but for the last 20 years, microsatellite loci have been quite widely used due to their features such as high polymorphism, multiallelicity, abundance in the genome and easy scorable (Kandemir & Kence, 1995;Smith et al, 1997;Bodur et al, 2007;Kekeçoğlu et al, 2009;Özdil et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2016;Rahimi et al, 2016;Haddad et al, 2018;Hassett et al, 2018;Yu et al, 2019;Özdil et al, 2022). Latterly, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been used in population genetics studies, however, thanks to the advantages provided by microsatellites, they could not get ahead of microsatellites even in the genomic era (Zimmerman et al, 2020;Mukherjee et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022).…”