Wing Geometric Morphometrics of Workers and Drones and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Provide Similar Genetic Structure in the Iberian Honey Bee (Apis mellifera iberiensis)

Abstract

Wing geometric morphometrics has been applied to honey bees (Apis mellifera) in identification of evolutionary lineages or subspecies and, to a lesser extent, in assessing genetic structure within subspecies. Due to bias in the production of sterile females (workers) in a colony, most studies have used workers leaving the males (drones) as a neglected group. However, considering their importance as reproductive individuals, the use of drones should be incorporated in these analyses in order to better understand diversity patterns and underlying evolutionary processes. Here, we assessed the usefulness of drone wings, as well as the power of wing geometric morphometrics, in capturing the signature of complex evolutionary processes by examining wing shape data, integrated with geographical information, from 711 colonies sampled across the entire distributional range of Apis mellifera iberiensis in Iberia. We compared the genetic patterns reconstructed from spatially-explicit shape variation extracted from wings of both sexes with that previously reported using 383 genome-wide SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). Our results indicate that the spatial structure retrieved from wings of drones and workers was similar (r = 0.93) and congruent with that inferred from SNPs (r = 0.90 for drones; r = 0.87 for workers), corroborating the clinal pattern that has been described for A. m. iberiensis using other genetic markers. In addition to showing that drone wings carry valuable genetic information, this study highlights the capability of wing geometric morphometrics in capturing complex genetic patterns, offering a reliable and low-cost alternative for preliminary estimation of population structure.

Potential Niche Modeling Distribution and Wing Geometric Morphometrics of Apis mellifera In The Brazilian Pantanal

“…The changes found in more distant geographic groups may reflect genetic aspects among the colonies in the Pantanal (Francoy et al, 2011;Combey et al, 2018;Henriques et al, 2020) or even in relation to resource use in case of some bees (Carneiro et al, 2019;Ribeiro et al, 2019). The slight variation between some points in the Pantanal could be related to the fact that some individuals collected were not from the same colony, that is, individual reflections of other distinct groups within the same collection point.…”

State-of-the-Art Techniques for Diagnosis of Medical Parasites and Arthropods

“…This approach showed 100% accuracy for the species identification of the chiggers [ 49 ]. Moreover, this technique was used to analyze species of Apidae bees, Formicidae ants, Ixodidae ticks, Psychodidae sandflies, and Reduviidae bugs [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ].…”

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

“…The anterior (LM5, LM7, and LM8) and the posterior (LM 18, LM19, and LM20) displacement resulted in a shortening linked to an expansion. The morphological characteristics of honeybees have an important role in discriminating honeybee subspecies (Salehi and Nazemi-Rafie 2020;Henriques et al 2020). It has been reported that different selective pressures shape morphological traits, which is crucial in evolutionary biology.…”