The complete mitochondrial genome of Apis mellifera unicolor (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apidae), the Malagasy honey bee

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome of the endemic Malagasy honey bee Apis mellifera unicolor is 16,373 bp and comprises 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, and a control region. The mitochondrial genome closely resembles mitogenomes of other published Apis mellifera subspecies, and the phylogenetic analysis suggests that A. m. unicolor is distinct from other African (A) lineage honey bees but is most closely related to the honey bees from southern African: A. m. scutellata and A. m. capensis.

Mitochondrial genomes illuminate the evolutionary history of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera)

“…However, this finding is in contrast with ML analyses of honey bee mitochondrial genomes which have consistently recovered the dark European honey bee ( A. m. mellifera , M lineage) as the basalmost subspecies. Analyses that have recovered a European cradle of A. mellifera have invariably used site-homogeneous models 24 – 30 . In our analyses, we have only recovered the M lineage as the basalmost group when the P123 dataset was analysed under ML.…”

“…The most recent whole genome analysis has lent support to either a north eastern African or a Middle Eastern origin of A. mellifera 23 , but discriminating between these two hypotheses has been proven challenging using any dataset. In stark contrast, analyses of complete mitochondrial genomes have recovered A. m. mellifera as the basalmost subspecies, thus placing the origin of honey bees within northern Europe 24 – 30 . A European origin of honey bees does not seem unreasonable, as the oldest unequivocal fossil representatives of the genus Apis are known from the Oligocene of France and Germany, and fossil European honey bees also show high degrees of morphological disparity 4 , 31 – 34 .…”

Mitochondrial genome of Apis mellifera anatoliaca (Hymenoptera: Apidae) – the Anatolian honey bee

“…Resulting data were checked for quality with FastQC (Andrews 2010), and then trimmed with Trimmomatic (Bolger et al 2014). Mapping was performed following Boardman et al (2019) in Geneious Prime 2019.0.4 (Kearse et al 2012) using the reference mitogenome with the highest pairwise identity (A. m. meda, KY464957). The mitogenome was initially annotated using mitos2 (Bernt et al 2013), and then manually adjusted to A. m. capensis (KX870183) annotation in Geneious Prime.…”

The mitochondrial genome of the Carniolan honey bee, Apis mellifera carnica (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apidae)

“…Honey bee genomic DNA extraction, quantification, genomic library preparation, and PE-150-bp next-generation sequencing (Illumina Hi-Seq 3000/4000, San Diego, CA) were performed following Eimanifar et al (2017). Bioinformatics were performed following Boardman et al (2019). Briefly, sequencing quality was assessed using FastQC (Andrews 2010) and trimmed with Trimmomatic (Bolger et al 2014).…”