Phylogeography of the Giant Honey Bees Based on Mitochondrial Gene Sequences Provisionally Accepted
Chet Bhatta
Sarah Cluff
Deborah Smith- 1Radford University, United States
- 2University of Kansas, United States
- 3Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women & Children, Hawaii Pacific Health, United States
We carried out a phylogenetic analysis of the giant honey bees using mitochondrial cox1 and cox2 gene sequences analysed with maximum likelihood methods. Our goal was to resolve phylogenetic relationships among Apis laboriosa, and the Apis dorsata subspecies A. d. dorsata, A. d. binghami, and A. d. breviligula, the last two of which have been proposed as full species by several authors. We obtained strong support for four clades within A. dorsata in the broad sense: the three subspecies or species mentioned above, and a fourth lineage from south India. However, our analysis did not resolve the phylogenetic relationships among the four lineages within A. dorsata in the broad sense. Recognition of these distinct lineages is important for conservation planning, so that their individual distributions, ecologies, and migration patterns can be taken into account.
Keywords: phylogeny, Apis dorsata, Apis laboriosa, cox1 gene, COX2 gene, Species discrimination
Received: 18 Mar 2024;
Accepted: 20 May 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Bhatta, Cluff and Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dr. Chet Bhatta, Radford University, Radford, United States
Dr. Deborah Smith, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 66045, Kansas, United States