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Reconstructing the invasion and the demographic history of the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, in Europe

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Abstract

The yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, was accidentally introduced from Southeast Asia and then invaded France and Korea over the last 10 years. Since its introduction, its predation on honeybee colonies has rapidly become an economic problem in invaded countries. Using mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase and 22 nuclear microsatellite loci, we showed that native hornet populations were well differentiated and highly diverse. In contrast, introduced populations from France and Korea suffered a genetic bottleneck, which did not prevent their rapid geographic expansion. Analysis of the genetic data indicates that French and Korean populations likely arose from two independent introduction events. The most probable source population is from an area between the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu. This invasion route is in agreement with knowledge on trade and historical records. By studying colonies of V. velutina, we demonstrated its polyandry, which is very rare among Vespidae. This mating behavior could have favored the success of this Asian hornet in Europe and Korea. Combined, the population and colony results suggest that very few or possibly only one single multi-mated female gave rise to the invasion.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Daniel Simberloff for his very useful rereading of an earlier version of the manuscript. We thank all the French beekeepers and associations that kindly provided us with Asian yellow-legged hornet samples from France. We also thank our colleagues Alain Roques (INRA, Orléans), Agnès Rortais (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette), Pierre Tripotin (MNHN, Paris), Tan Ken (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), Yayuk Suhardjono and Oscar Effendy (Museum of Bogor, LIPI, Indonesia), and Truong Quang Tam (Institute of Tropical Biology, Vietnam) for help with sample collection from Asia. Cyril Nadeau, Delia Dupré and Ugoline Godeau provided technical help in the laboratory. This study was financially supported by France AgriMer (Programme communautaire pour l’Apiculture, 2008–2011) and IRD and CNRS core budgets. Collecting missions were supported by the MNHN for Vietnam (PPF 2008); Indonesia (ATM Biodiversité 2010), China (ATM Formes 2010). We thank Emmanuelle Baudry (UPSud, Orsay) for fruitful comments on the manuscript. The English was revised by Helen McCombie.

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Arca, M., Mougel, F., Guillemaud, T. et al. Reconstructing the invasion and the demographic history of the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, in Europe. Biol Invasions 17, 2357–2371 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-015-0880-9

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