Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
APIMONDIA, İstanbul, Türkiye, 24 - 28 Ağustos 2022, ss.41-42
The western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is native to Europe, Africa, and Western Asia with a great diversity of subspecies.
Subspecies can be classified into four different evolutionary lineages, mainly based on morphological characters and genetic
markers: the M lineage of Eurasia, the C lineage of Europe, the O lineage of Western Asia, and the A lineage of Africa.
Nuclear and mitochondrial molecular markers have been widely used to distinguish honey bee subspecies and reveal the
evolutionary process of honey bee subspecies. Discrimination of subspecies by different methods is also important in terms
of conservation of honey bee biodiversity. In this study, nuclear vitellogenin gene-Vg region encoding protein that affects
reproductive function, behavior, immunity, longevity, and social organization in honey bees, was selected to understand the evolutionary history of honey bee subspecies. To investigate the pattern of genetic variation associated with Vg region of
different subspecies and to reveal their evolutionary history, six variable Vg exon regions (Vg2-7 exons) of 16 subspecies
were partially sequenced. The obtained sequences were combined with 5 subspecies that are available in the NCBI GenBank
Database and the total number of subspecies analyzed reached to 18. Phylogenetic construction based on beast tree
resulted in four main groups. Subspecies were consistently clustered into previously recognized lineages. The medianjoining
network constructed using the haplotype datasets of the nuclear Vg region and yielded similar clustering with some
admixture among different lineages. This admixture can be explained by the queen trade among different regions. Despite
of having admixture, Vg region could be a valuable genetic marker to reveal phylogenetic relationships among honey bee
subspecies.