Determination of the wing morphology differentiation of old and recent honey bee samples from western Turkey using geometric morphometrics

Abstract

In this study, old and recent honey bee, Apis mellifera L., 1758 (Hymenoptera: Apidae) specimens were compared using geometric morphometrics. The old honey bee samples were collected from different apiaries in Edirne, Balıkesir, Çanakkale, Denizli and Muğla Provinces, and Gökçeada (an Aegean island) in Turkey in 1987-1988 under a project of the Aegean Agricultural Research Institute and the recent samples were collected in the same locations in 2017. The mean values determined for each region were grouped using Mahalanobis distances, and the results were summarized on dendrogram. While the old samples constituted one group, the recent samples constituted another one. When the results of the discriminant function analysis were compared, it was observed that overall old and recent samples were statistically different from each other (P < 0.0001). The evaluation of both groups has revealed that the recent population of Gökçeada was different from morphologically the other mainland populations in the current situation. However, the Thrace (Edirne) honey bee specimens were different from the Anatolian (Çanakkale, Denizli, Balıkesir, Muğla) and island (Gökçeada) specimens in the past according to dendrogram relationships.