Mitochondrial genomes illuminate the evolutionary history of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera).

ABSTRACT: Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) are one of the most important pollinators of agricultural crops and wild plants. Despite the growth in the availability of sequence data for honey bees, the phylogeny of the species remains a subject of controversy. Most notably, the geographic origin of honey bees is uncertain, as are the relationships among its constituent lineages and subspecies. We aim to infer the evolutionary and biogeographical history of the honey bee from mitochondrial genomes. Here we analyse the full mitochondrial genomes of 18 A. mellifera subspecies, belonging to all major lineages, using a range of gene sampling strategies and inference models to identify factors that may have contributed to the recovery of incongruent results in previous studies. Our analyses support a nor

SUBMITTER: Tihelka E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7471700 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature