Abstract
We investigated the genetic structure of Chinese Apis dorsata population based on DNA microsatellites. The results show that populations from different geographical regions are significantly differentiated. Furthermore, the A. dorsata population from Hainan Island very probably diverged from that of the China mainland and also exhibits a lower level of genetic diversity, which is probably the result of founder effects and genetic drift. The results provide useful information for effective management and conservation of A. dorsata in China, particularly with regard to the population of Hainan Island.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arias, M.C., Sheppard, W.S. (2005) Phylogenetic relationships of honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apinae: Apini) inferred from nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 37, 25–35
Berghoff, S.M., Kronauer, D.J.C., Edwards, K.J., Franks, N.R. (2008) Dispersal and population structure of a New World predator, the army ant Eciton burchellii. J. Evol. Biol. 21, 1125–1132
Corlett, R.T. (2011) Honeybees in natural ecosystems. In: Hepburn, H.R., Radloff, S.E. (eds.) Honeybees of Asia, pp. 215–226. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
Estoup, A., Solignac, M., Harry, M., Cornuet, J.M. (1993) Characterization of (GT)n and (CT)n microsatellites in two insect species: Apis mellifera and Bombus terrestris. Nucleic Acids Res. 21, 1427
Estoup, A., Solignac, M., Cornuet, J.M. (1994) Precise assessment of the number of patrilines and of genetic relatedness in honeybee colonies. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 258, 1–7
Estoup, A., Solignac, M., Cornuet, J.M., Goudet, J., Scholl, A. (1996) Genetic differentiation of continental and island populations of Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Europe. Mol. Ecol. 5, 19–31
Frankham, R. (1997) Do island populations have less genetic variation than mainland populations? Heredity 78, 311–327
Gao, P.F., Zhao, H.T., Zhang, C.X., Jiang, Y.S. (2008) Phylogeny of different geographic populations Apis cerana in China based on mtDNA cytochrome b gene sequences. Acta Zoologica Sinica 54, 1005–1013 [in Chinese]
Goldstein, D.B., Schlötterer, C. (1999) Microsatellites: evolution and applications. Oxford Univ. Press., Oxford
Goudet, J. (2001) FSTAT, a program to estimate and test gene diversities and fixation indices (version 2.9.3). Available from http://www.unil.ch/izea/softwares/fstat.html. Updated from Goudet (1995)
Groom, S.V.C., Schwarz, M.P. (2011) Bees in the Southwest Pacific: origins, diversity and conservation. Apidologie 42(6): 759–770
Hepburn, H.R., Radloff, S.E. (2011) Biogeography. In: Hepburn, H.R., Radloff, S.E. (eds.) Honeybees of Asia, pp. 62–63. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
Insuan, S., Deowanish, S., Klinbunga, S., Sittipraneed, S., Sylvester, H.A., Wongsiri, S. (2007) Genetic differentiation of the giant honey bee (Apis dorsata) in Thailand analyzed by mitochondrial genes and microsatellites. Biochem. Genet. 45, 345–361
Jiang, Y.S., Zhao, H.T., Jiang, J.B., Cao, G.Q., Zhang, G.X., Zhu, W.J., Guo, C.J. (2007) Studies on mtDNA tRNAleu ∼ COII gene polymorphisms of Apis cerana distributed in different geographic areas in China. Scienfia Agricultura Sinica 40, 1535–1542 [in Chinese]
Kaiser-Bunbury, C.N., Traveset, A., Hansen, D.M. (2010) Conservation and restoration of plant-animal mutualisms on oceanic islands. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evol. Syst. 12, 131–143
Kalinowski, S.T. (2004) Counting alleles with rarefaction: Private alleles and hierarchical sampling designs. Conserv. Genet. 5, 539–543
Kalinowski, S.T. (2005) HP-RARE 1.0: a computer program for performing rarefaction on measures of allelic richness. Mol. Ecol. Notes 5, 187–189
Kraus, F.B., Koeniger, N., Tingek, S., Moritz, R.F.A. (2005) Temporal genetic structure of a drone congregation area of the giant Asian honeybee (Apis dorsata). Naturwissenschaften 92, 578–581
Kronauer, D.J.C., Berghoff, S.M., Powell, S., Denny, A.J., Edwards, K.J., Franks, N.R., Boomsma, J.J. (2006) A reassessment of the mating system characteristics of the army ant Eciton burchellii. Naturwissenschaften 93, 402–406
Lo, N., Gloag, R.S., Anderson, D.L., Oldroyd, B.P. (2010) A molecular phylogeny of the genus Apis suggests that the Giant Honey Bee of the Philippines, A. breviligula Maa, and the Plains Honey Bee of southern India, A. indica Fabricius, are valid species. Syst. Entomol. 35, 226–233
Moilanen, A., Sundström, L., Pedersen, J.S. (2004) MATESOFT: a program for deducing paternal genotypes and estimating mating system statistics in haplodiploid species. Mol. Ecol. Notes 4, 795–797
Nath, S., Roy, P., John, M., Leo, R. (1994) Honey hunters and beekeepers of Tamil Nadu. A survey document. Keystone, Pondicherry, India
Nei, M. (1987) Molecular evolutionary genetics. Columbia Univ. Press., New York
Nei M., Tajima F., Tateno Y. (1983) Accuracy of estimated phylogenetic trees from molecular data. J. Mol. Evol. 19, 153–170
Oldroyd, B.P., Nanork, P. (2009) Conservation of Asian honey bees. Apidologie 40, 296–312
Oldroyd, B.P., Wongsiri, S. (2006) Asian honey bees: biology, conservation, and human interactions. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Oldroyd, B.P., Smolenski, A.J., Cornuet, J.M., Wongsiri, S., Estoup, A., Rinderer, T.E., Crozier, R.H. (1996) Levels of polyandry and intracolonial genetic relationships in Apis dorsata (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 89, 276–283
Ota T. (1993) DISPAN. Genetic distance and phylogenetic analysis. Pennsylvania State University. University Park, PA, USA
Paar, J., Oldroyd, B.P., Huettinger, E., Kastberger, G. (2002) Drifting of workers in nest aggregations of the giant honeybee Apis dorsata. Apidologie 33, 553–561
Paar, J., Oldroyd, B.P., Huettinger, E., Kastberger, G. (2004) Genetic structure of an Apis dorsata population: the significance of migration and colony aggregation. J. Hered. 95, 119–126
Partap, U. (2011) The pollination role of honeybees. In: Hepburn, H.R., Radloff, S.E. (eds.) Honeybees of Asia, pp. 227–255. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
Peakall, R., Smouse, P.E. (2006) GENALEX 6: genetic analysis in Excel. Population genetic software for teaching and research. Mol. Ecol. Notes 6, 288–295
Rousset, F. (2008) GENEPOP ' 007: a complete re-implementation of the GENEPOP software for Windows and Linux. Mol. Ecol. Resour. 8, 103–106
Ruttner, F. (1988) Biogeography and taxonomy of honeybees. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E.F., Maniatis, T. (1989) Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, New York
Smith, D.R. (1991) Mitochondrial DNA and honey bee biogeography. In: Smith, D.R. (eds.) Diversity in the Genus Apis, pp. 131–176. Westview Press, Boulder, CO
Weir, B., Cockerham, C.C. (1984) Estimating F-statistics for the analysis of population structure. Evolution 38, 1358–1370
Widmer, A., Schmid-Hempel, P., Estoup, A., Scholl, A. (1998) Population genetic structure and colonization history of Bombus terrestris s.l. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) from the Canary Islands and Madeira. Heredity 81, 563–572
Wongsiri, S., Chanchao, C., Lekprayoon, C., Wattanasermkit, K., Deowanish, S., Leepitakrat, S. (2001) Honeybee diversity and management in the new millennium in Thailand. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tropical Bees, pp. 9–14. Chiang Mai
Woyke, J., Wilde, J., Wilde, M., Sivaram, V., Cervancia, C., Nagaraja, N., Reddy, M. (2008) Comparison of defense body movements of Apis laboriosa, Apis dorsata dorsata and Apis dorsata breviligula honey bees. J. Insect Behav. 21, 481–494
Yang, G.H. (1984a) The survey of the resource of the Chinese honey bee, Zhongguo Yangfeng 3, 4–7 [in Chinese]
Yang, G.H. (1984b) The survey of the resource of the Chinese honey bee II, Zhongguo Yangfeng 6, 16–19 [in Chinese]
Zhao, H., Wang, L.R., Yuan, J.Y. (2007) Origin and time of Qiongzhou Strait. Marine Geology and Quaternary Geology 27, 33–40 [in Chinese]
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge Hai-Ou Kuang, Jing-Lin Gao, Chuan-Quan Yang, Shao-Yu He, Xue-Wen Zhang, Jie Yang, and Xuan Chen for their help during sampling. We thank De-Fang Niu and Gang Zhang for technical support and Wen-Ting Wei for statistical support. This study was supported by the fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System from the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China (CARS-45).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Structure génétique de la population chinoise d’ Apis dorsata , basée sur les microsatellites
Apis dorsata / structure génétique / Chine / microsatellites / diversité génétique
Genetische Struktur von Apis dorsata Populationen in China auf der Basis von Mikrosatelliten
Apis dorsata / genetische Struktur / China / Mikrosatelliten
Manuscript editor: Marina Meixner
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cao, LF., Zheng, HQ., Hu, FL. et al. Genetic structure of Chinese Apis dorsata population based on microsatellites. Apidologie 43, 643–651 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-012-0139-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-012-0139-8