Genetic divergence and phylogeny of north-western Indian Himalayan population of honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences

The utilization of molecular techniques to predict the phylogenetic similarity within the honey bee topologically divided these into three groups viz., giant bees, dwarf bees and cavity-nesting bees. Four species of honey bee, i.e., Asian honey bee (Apis cerana), dwarf bee (Apis florea), the rock or giant honey bee (Apis dorsata) and European honey bee (Apis mellifera) collected from North Western Himalaya region were molecularly characterized using partial mitochondrial Cytochrome oxidase I (COI). Nucleotide frequency analysis revealed that partial COI gene sequences were A+T biased (>73%), while the amino acid frequency analysis showed higher frequency of leucine (13.71%) and serine (12.27%). Among the tested species of honey bees A. florea showed exceptionally higher concentration of Cystine Amino acid. The overall variation in 72 SNPs was revealed by multiple sequence alignment of COI sequences from four species. The results reveal more transversion (56.5%) compared to transition (43.5%). Additionally, the pairwise genetic distance analysis described that A. cerana and A. dorsata had least genetic distance (0.102). The Ts/Tv value of 0.61 suggests that there is insignificant neutral selection in honeybees of north western Himalayan region of Uttarakhand. Such researches are significantly important to analyze the biodiversity of area, distinguish cryptic species and develop distinct taxonomic tools for integrative taxonomy of Honey bees.