Evaluating the phylogenetic relationship of a dwarf honey bee through cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COX1) gene sequence databases

Abstract

Dwarf honey bees, Apis florea, and Apis andreniformis are known as the potential wild pollinator in Asia. Apis florea was introduced to Indonesia, West Asia, and Africa. Based on the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COX1) gene, introduced A. florea in Iran is suggested to come from India. Although the databases of the dwarf honey bee COX1 gene are available in GenBank, however, the phylogeny analysis was focused on the restricted area. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the phylogenetic relationship and genetic diversity of dwarf honey bees based on the COX1 gene sequence from GenBank databases. The COX1 gene sequence databases are collected from NCBI. The genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship are analyzed using MEGAX. Alignment of 530 bp COX1 gene of dwarf honey bee showed that there are 60 nucleotide variations between A. florea and A. andreniformis. Our analysis indicated that the genetic diversity between A. andreniformis is low (0-0.19%). On the other hand, there are 28 nucleotide variations between A. florea and eight nucleotide sites that are suggested as a marker to differentiate A. florea1 India+Egypt+Iran and A. florea2 Thailand+China with 1.7-3.4% genetic distance. The high genetic distance of A. florea is supported by the separation sub-clade of A. florea1 and A. florea2 in the phylogenetic tree.