PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mert Kükrer
AU  - Meral Kence
AU  - Aykut Kence
TI  - Genetic evidences for the impact of anthropogenic factors on honey bee diversity
AID  - 10.1101/154195
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 154195
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/154195.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/154195.full
AB  - Intense admixture of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) populations is mostly attributed to migratory beekeeping practices and replacement of queens or colonies with non-native races or hybrids of different subspecies. These two practices are also heavily carried out in Turkey where 5 subspecies are present naturally.Here, we carried out an analysis of population structure of Turkish honey bees sampled from six different regions (n = 250) in order to test the genetic impacts of migratory beekeeping, queen and colony trade and conservation efficacy of isolated regions. A total of 29 microsatellite markers were used in four multiplex reactions.Direct genetic impact of migratory beekeeping was demonstrated first time based on a comparison of assignment probabilities of individuals to their geographic populations where migratory colonies showed less fidelity. The effects of queen and colony trade were revealed by the presence of very high introgression levels from the highly commercial Caucasian bees naturally limited to a narrow range. Comparison between regions that are either open to migratory beekeeping or not let us evaluate the status of isolated regions as centers of limited gene flow and showed the importance of establishing such regions.Despite the signs of gene flow, our findings confirm high levels of geographically structured genetic diversity of four subspecies of honey bees in Turkey and emphasize the need to develop policies to maintain this diversity.