Geometric morphometrics

Rapid morphological changes in populations of hybrids between Africanized and European honey bees

T. M. Francoy, Gonçalves, L. S., and De Jong, D., Rapid morphological changes in populations of hybrids between Africanized and European honey bees, vol. 11, pp. 3349-3356, 2012.

African honey bees, introduced to Brazil in 1956, rapidly dominated the previously introduced European subspecies. To better understand how hybridization between these different types of bees proceeded, we made geometric morphometric analyses of the wing venation patterns of specimens resulting from crosses made between Africanized honey bees (predominantly Apis mellifera scutellata) and Italian honey bees (A. mellifera ligustica) from 1965 to 1967, at the beginning of the Africanization process, in an apiary about 150 km from the original introduction site.

Morphometric and genetic changes in a population of Apis mellifera after 34 years of Africanization

T. M. Francoy, Wittmann, D., Steinhage, V., Drauschke, M., Müller, S., Cunha, D. R., Nascimento, A. M., Figueiredo, V. L. C., Simões, Z. L. P., De Jong, D., Arias, M. C., and Gonçalves, L. S., Morphometric and genetic changes in a population of Apis mellifera after 34 years of Africanization, vol. 8, pp. 709-717, 2009.

Though the replacement of European bees by Africanized honey bees in tropical America has attracted considerable attention, little is known about the temporal changes in morphological and genetic characteristics in these bee populations. We examined the changes in the morphometric and genetic profiles of an Africanized honey bee population collected near where the original African swarms escaped, after 34 years of Africanization. Workers from colonies sampled in 1968 and in 2002 were morphometrically analyzed using relative warps analysis and an Automatic Bee Identification System (ABIS).

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