Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The European dark honey bee, Apis mellifera
mellifera , is threatened inmost of its native range,
in part, due to introgressive hybridization with
bees from the highly divergent C-lineage, mainly
Apis mellifera carnica and Apis mellifera
ligustica (De la Rúa et al. 2009; Pinto et al.
2014). Yet, the maintenance of locally adapted
genetic diversity is critical for the population
long-term survival and sustainability (De la Rúa
et al. 2009; Meixner 2010). The growing awareness
that genetic diversity is important for sustainable
beekeeping led to implementation of different
conservation and breeding programs throughout
Europe, which are in need of reliable and costefficient
molecular tools to accurately monitor Clineage
introgression into A. m. mellifera (De la
Rúa et al. 2009; Henriques et al. 2018a, b;
Meixner 2010). The large mating flight distances
and the polyandrous mating system make it challenging
to preserve honey bee subspecies in an
open conservation area where intruders can fly in
(Neumann et al. 1999). It is therefore necessary to
regularly control the genetic ancestry of new or
superseded colonies.
Description
Keywords
Apis mellifera mellifera Conservation Maternal lineage mtDNA SNPs
Citation
Henriques, Dora; Parejo, Melanie; Lopes, Ana R.; Pinto, Maria Alice (2019). Mitochondrial SNP markers to monitor evolutionary lineage ancestry in Apis mellifera mellifera conservation programs. Apidologie. ISSN 0044-8435. 50:4, p. 538-541