Procruste analysis of forewing shape in two endemic honeybee subspecies Apis mellifera intermissa and A. m. sahariensis from the Northwest of Algeria

Abstract

Abstract. Abed F, Bachir-Bouiadjra B, Dahloum L, Yakubu A, Haddad A, Homrani A. 2021. Procruste analysis of forewing shape in two endemic honeybee subspecies Apis mellifera intermissa and A. m. sahariensis from the Northwest of Algeria. Biodiversitas 22: 154-164. Honey bees play an important role as pollinators of many crops. Thus they are collectively considered as a veritable economic source. The present study was undertaken to describe variation in the right forewing geometry in two Algerian honeybee subspecies Apis mellifera intermissa and Apis mellifera sahariensis using landmark-based geometric morphometrics. A total of 1286 honeybees were sampled from 12 provinces in the northwest of Algeria. The forewing geometry was evaluated using 20 homologous landmarks by applying Procrustes superimposition analysis. The top four principal components accounted for only 41.1% of wing shape variation between the two subspecies. There was a significant difference in wing shape between the two subspecies (Mahalanobis distance = 1.0626 ; P<0.001), whereas their wing size seemed similar (P>0.05). Regarding the allometric effect, the percentage of variation in wing shape explained by size changes was relatively small, with 1.28% and 4.37% for A. m. intermissa and A.m sahariensis, respectively. The cross-validation procedure correctly classified 68.3% of specimens into their original groups. PERMANOVA test revealed significant differences in the right forewing shape among all geographic areas studied (P<0.001). The results clearly showed that the landmark-based geometric approach applied to forewings venation is a powerful and reliable tool in the discrimination of native honey bee subspecies and should be considered in local honey bee biodiversity improvement and conservation initiatives.

Geographical Variation of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L. 1758) Populations in South-Eastern Morocco: A Geometric Morphometric Analysis

“…The same result was also mentioned by Cornuet et al [ 14 ], indicating a gradient of mean body size that increases south to north. However, this was not confirmed in other studies related to wing size [ 5 , 6 , 9 ]; in one study the opposite relationship was even reported [ 8 ].…”

“…When the shape of wing venation was analysed by geometric morphometrics, significant differences were found between A. m. sahariensis and other subspecies. However, a similarity to A. m. intermissa is also clearly visible and in some studies, a relatively large overlap was found between the two subspecies [ 7 , 8 , 9 ].…”

Natural clines and human management impact the genetic structure of Algerian honey bee populations

“…It has been established by previous studies that the two Algerian subspecies ( A. m. intermissa and A. m. sahariensis ) can be differentiated based on morphological and behavioural differences [ 6 ] and by mitochondrial, microsatellites and sequencing analyses [ 13 – 17 ]. Our sampling for this study includes both subspecies, although in a rather unbalanced way (16 sahariensis vs. 86 intermissa ).…”

“…Several studies have been carried out to characterize the two subspecies according to morphological and molecular aspects. The morphometric studies undertaken on Algerian honey bees have shown the existence of two distinct subspecies that morphologically correspond to A. m. intermissa and A. m. sahariensis [ 13 – 15 ]. Several molecular studies have been conducted on Algerian bees notably with microsatellite markers [ 16 ] and a single A.m. intermissa individual was sequenced [ 17 ].…”

Multivariate analysis of body weight, morphometric and thermo-physiological traits of indigenous pigs under tropical conditions

“…A considerable number of techniques describing pig morphometric have been utilized in the past (Muta et al, 2011;Adeola et al, 2013;Walugembe et al, 2014). However, multivariate principal component and discriminant analyses, which have been successfully used in other livestock species (Yakubu et al, 2010;Fraga et al, 2016;Belkhadem et al, 2019;Mediouni et al, 2020;Meka et al, 2021;Abed et al, 2021) could be invaluable refined techniques for obtaining very useful information related to several characteristics of pigs (Ventura et al, 2012) including body measurements (Silva Filha et al, 2010) and thermo physiological traits. Evaluating and assessing the body weight, morphometric and heat-tolerance traits of animals are important to identify the uniqueness of populations, adaptive capacity and possible gene flow between the indigenous populations.…”