Abstract
Abstract Researchers have hypothesized that wild stingless bee colonies are a repository of genes for managed populations via the mating of managed virgin queens with males from wild colonies. We tested this hypothesis with the stingless bee, Scaptotrigona mexicana, a culturally important species in the study region. Each of ten colonies were split into two colonies and placed in a meliponary, which resulted in ten queen-right mother colonies and ten queenless daughter colonies. We allowed daughter colonies to produce gynes, which then naturally mated with males of unknown origins. Six months later, five third-instar larvae from each colony were genotyped at six microsatellite loci. Four new alleles (12% of 33 alleles) were found in daughter colonies that were not present in any other mother colony. The Fst index showed no overall significant differences between mother and daughter colonies, indicating that they belonged to the same population despite the new alleles. Interestingly, nine queens were estimated to be polyandrous, with an average mating frequency of 1.3, unlike previous reports for this species. These results have implications for the fitness of managed stingless bee colonies and suggest that a better understanding of how gene flow is affected by human management practices would be beneficial.
Highlights
Stingless bees (Apidae, Meliponini), a group of eusocial Hymenoptera, are exclusively tropical (Michener, 2013) and important pollinators of many flowering plants, both domesticated and wild (Heard, 1999)
We tested the contribution of wild populations to the genetic pool of a managed meliponary by generating daughter colonies that could freely mate with wild and managed male stingless bees
The detection of four new alleles (12% of 33 alleles total) in daughter colonies that were not found in any mother colony, demonstrates the introduction of genetic material from wild male stingless bees
Summary
Stingless bees (Apidae, Meliponini), a group of eusocial Hymenoptera, are exclusively tropical (Michener, 2013) and important pollinators of many flowering plants, both domesticated and wild (Heard, 1999). Some meliponine species have been semi-domesticated to provide honey and, more importantly, pollination services (Kwapong et al, 2010). A key aspect of this semi-domestication has been the development of colony splitting and propagation techniques (Aidoo, 2020). In Melipona favosa, for example, young queens are attracted to males congregating twelve meters from the colony (Sommeijer & de Bruijn, 1995). These congregations might include males from colonies located at more distant locations: males of Tetragonisca angustula are known to disperse from a few meters up to 2.25 km from their colony, reducing the probability of inbreeding (dos Santos et al, 2016)
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