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Han F, Wallberg A, Webster MT. From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?. Ecol Evol. 2012;2(8):1949-57doi: 10.1002/ece3.312.
Han, F., Wallberg, A., & Webster, M. T. (2012). From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?. Ecology and evolution, 2(8), 1949-57. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.312
Han, Fan, et al. "From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?." Ecology and evolution vol. 2,8 (2012): 1949-57. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.312
Han F, Wallberg A, Webster MT. From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?. Ecol Evol. 2012 Aug;2(8):1949-57. doi: 10.1002/ece3.312. Epub 2012 Jul 12. PMID: 22957195; PMCID: PMC3433997.
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Ecol Evol. 2012 Aug;2(8):1949-57. doi: 10.1002/ece3.312. Epub 2012 Jul 12.

From where did the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) originate?.

Ecology and evolution

Fan Han, Andreas Wallberg, Matthew T Webster

Affiliations

  1. Science for Life Laboratory, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University Sweden.

PMID: 22957195 PMCID: PMC3433997 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.312

Abstract

The native range of the honeybee Apis mellifera encompasses Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, whereas the nine other species of Apis are found exclusively in Asia. It is therefore commonly assumed that A. mellifera arose in Asia and expanded into Europe and Africa. However, other hypotheses for the origin of A. mellifera have also been proposed based on phylogenetic trees constructed from genetic markers. In particular, an analysis based on >1000 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers placed the root of the tree of A. mellifera subspecies among samples from Africa, suggestive of an out-of-Africa expansion. Here, we re-evaluate the evidence for this and other hypotheses by testing the robustness of the tree topology to different tree-building methods and by removing specimens with a potentially hybrid background. These analyses do not unequivocally place the root of the tree of A. mellifera subspecies within Africa, and are potentially consistent with a variety of hypotheses for honeybee evolution, including an expansion out of Asia. Our analyses also support high divergence between western and eastern European populations of A. mellifera, suggesting they are likely derived from two distinct colonization routes, although the sources of these expansions are still unclear.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; genomics; population genetics

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