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Successful maintenance of a stingless bee population despite a severe genetic bottleneck

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Abstract

Stingless bees play an important ecological role as pollinators of many wild plant species in the tropics and have significant potential for the pollination of agricultural crops. Nevertheless, conservation efforts as well as commercial breeding programmes require better guidelines on the amount of genetic variation that is needed to maintain viable populations. In this context, we carried out a long-term genetic study on the stingless bee Melipona scutellaris to evaluate the population viability consequences of prolonged breeding from a small number of founder colonies. In particular, it was artificially imposed a genetic bottleneck by setting up a population starting from only two founder colonies, and continued breeding from it for a period of over 10 years in a location outside its natural area of occurrence. We show that despite a great reduction in the number of alleles present at both neutral microsatellite loci and the sex-determining locus relative to its natural source population, and an increased frequency in the production of sterile diploid males, the genetically impoverished population could be successfully bred and maintained for at least 10 years. This shows that in stingless bees, breeding from a small stock of colonies may have less severe consequences than previously suspected. In addition, we provide a simulation model to determine the number of colonies that are needed to maintain a certain number of sex alleles in a population, thereby providing useful guidelines for stingless bee breeding and conservation efforts.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (05/58093-8 to D.A.A.; 04/15801-0 to V.L.I.F.), the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (480957/2004-5 to V.L.I.F.) and the FWO-Flanders (to T.W. and J.B.) for financial support. We are especially thankful to Dr. P. Nogueira-Neto for providing valuable support and helpful expertise, allowing us to collect data from his hives in São Simão. We also thank Mr. F. Carvalho, Mrs. S. Carvalho and Dr. M. Cortopassi-Laurino for their help with sample collection in Igarassu. Work was carried out under permit numbers 139311, 08BR001591/DF and 08BR002483/DF from the Brazilian Ministry of Environment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bee Laboratory, Bioscience Institute, University of São Paulo, Rua do Matão Trav. 14, 321, 05508-090, São Paulo, Brazil

    Denise Araujo Alves, Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca & Pérsio Souza Santos-Filho

  2. School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of São Paulo, Rua Arlindo Béttio 1000, 03828-000, São Paulo, Brazil

    Tiago Maurício Francoy

  3. Laboratory of Entomology, Zoological Institute, Catholic University of Leuven, Naamsestraat 59, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Johan Billen & Tom Wenseleers

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  1. Denise Araujo Alves
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  2. Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca
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  3. Tiago Maurício Francoy
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  4. Pérsio Souza Santos-Filho
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  5. Johan Billen
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  6. Tom Wenseleers
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Correspondence to Denise Araujo Alves.

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Alves, D.A., Imperatriz-Fonseca, V.L., Francoy, T.M. et al. Successful maintenance of a stingless bee population despite a severe genetic bottleneck. Conserv Genet 12, 647–658 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-010-0171-z

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