Characterization of the native honey bee subspecies in Saudi Arabia using the mtDNA COI–COII intergenic region and morphometric characteristics

Journal Article

ANSARI, Yehya ALATTAL, Mohamad ALSHARHI, Ahmad ALGHAMDI, Sulaiman ALFAIFY, Hussien MIGDADI, Mohammad . 2014

• المجلة \ الصحيفة: Bulletin of Insectology
• رقم العدد: 1
• رقم الإصدار السنوي: 67
• الصفحات: 31-37

مستخلص المنشور

The honey bee, Apis mellifera L. 1758, is naturally found
throughout Europe, Africa and Western Asia (Miguel et
al., 2011). In recent years, based on morphometry, 26
subspecies have been identified and clustered into four
evolutionary lineages (Ruttner, 1988; Sheppard et al.,
1997; Engel, 1999; Sheppard and Meixner, 2003; Miguel
et al., 2011). The indigenous honey bee of Saudi Arabia,
which is the focus of this publication, was characterized
morphometrically by Ruttner in 1975 as Apis mellifera
jemenitica, a honey bee subspecies that has evolved and
adapted to hot and adverse climatic conditions. Recently,
significant morphometric variations revealed three welldefined
clusters of the native honey bee in Saudi Arabia
(AlGhamdi et al., 2012). Although morphological characteristics
are still considered very important in the classification
of honey bees, this approach is not well suited to
characterize honey bee subspecies and analyze phylogenetic
relationships, as they can be sensitive to environmental
selection pressures (Franck et al., 2000b). Genetic
markers such as the mtDNA COI–COII intergenic region
are unique to the genus Apis (Cornuet and Garnery,
1991). Variations in the sequences of this region or the
length of fragments produced using endonucleases are
used extensively to differentiate among five honey bee
lineages and to discriminate among A. mellifera subspecies
(Garnery et al., 1992; Franck et al., 2000a; Sheppard
and Smith, 2000). Sequencing is more sensitive and may
reveal new haplotypes that have not been previously described
(Ozdil et al., 2009; Solorzano et al., 2009; Magnus
and Szalanski, 2010; Szalanski and Magnus, 2010).
To date, a characterization of the Saudi honey bee is lacking.
In the present study, morphological characteristics
and mtDNA COI-COII sequence data were used to characterize
the honey bees within Saudi Arabia.