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A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera.

ABSTRACT: The taxonomy of honey bee A. mellifera contains a lot of issues due to the specificity of population structure, features of biology and resolutions of honey bee subspecies discrimination methods. There are a lot of transition zones between ranges of subspecies which led to the gradual changes of characteristics among neighbor subspecies. The modern taxonomic pattern of honey bee Apis mellifera is given in this paper. Thirty-three distinct honey bee subspecies are distributed across all Africa (11 subspecies), Western Asia and the Middle East (9 subspecies), and Europe (13 subspecies). All honey bee subspecies are subdivided into 5 evolutionary lineages: lineage A (10 subspecies) and its sublineage Z (3 subspecies), lineage M (3 subspecies), lineage C (10 subspecies), lineage O (3 subspecies), lineage Y (1 subspecies), lineage C or O (3 subspecies).

SUBMITTER: Ilyasov RA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7714978 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera.

Ilyasov Rustem A RA Lee Myeong-Lyeol ML Takahashi Jun-Ichi JI Kwon Hyung Wook HW Nikolenko Alexey G AG

Saudi journal of biological sciences 20200806 12

The taxonomy of honey bee A. mellifera contains a lot of issues due to the specificity of population structure, features of biology and resolutions of honey bee subspecies discrimination methods. There are a lot of transition zones between ranges of subspecies which led to the gradual changes of characteristics among neighbor subspecies. The modern taxonomic pattern of honey bee Apis mellifera is given in this paper. Thirty-three distinct honey bee subspecies are distributed across ...[more]

PMID: 33304172

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