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Temporal genetic analysis of an introgressed island honey bee population (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain)

Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are crucial for the pollination of many wild and cultivated plants, and therefore require conservation of their genetic variation (Jaffe et al., 2010). This variation needs to be monitored over time to permit detection of any changes that could constitute threats to this important biological resource. Honey bees from the Canary Islands are morphologically similar to A. m. iberiensis (Padilla et al., 1998) but based on variation of the mitochondrial DNA, they have been included in an African evolutionary sub-lineage with Atlantic distribution, together with other honey bee populations from Macaronesian archipelagos including Madeira and the Azores (De la Rua et al., 2006). Beekeepers from different Canary Islands show varying levels of interest towards preserving their local honey bee. Some of the beekeepers from Tenerife regularly introduce queens from foreign subspecies (mainly A. m. ligustica and A. m. carnica, belonging to the East European C evolutionary lineage) into their apiaries to increase honey production (Bouga et al., 2011), whilst beekeepers from La Palma are among those that prefer to use the local black honey bee. The introduction of bees from abroad has a potential risk due to the possible dissemination of parasites such as the ectoparasite Varroa destructor (Moritz et al., 2005) and the microsporidium Nosema ceranae (Higes et al., 2010). Introducing foreign subspecies can also have an impact on local populations adapted to the particular environmental conditions of the islands. The Canary Islands harbour around 525 endemic plant species (Martin et al., 2005), many of them exclusively pollinated by local honey bees. Given that, the replacement of the local populations by introduced subspecies could lead to a reduction of the reproduction rate of the endemic plants. Tenerife is the largest island of the Canarian archipelago with a 50% of the total number of Canarian honey bee colonies. In 1998 around 37% of these colonies belonged to the C lineage, demonstrating the extent of introductions and that hybridization was occurring between local and imported honey bees (De la Rua et al., 2002). In this study we aim to determine whether the amount of genetic variation has changed over a 10 years period due to the continued introduction of queens of foreign subspecies. Genetic diversity was inferred from the variation of five microsatellite loci analysed in worker honey bees collected randomly (without previous information about the reared subspecies) from the inner frames of 68 colonies in 1998 and 53 colonies in 2008. Sampling in 1998 was performed in a variable number of colonies (2-19) per apiary and in ten apiaries from five localities spread on the island (Fig. 1). In 2008 the sampling was performed in a reduced number of colonies (1-5) per apiary, but increasing the number of apiaries (38) and localities (19). Genotyping and determination of the standard parameters of population genetics were performed as described in Munoz et al. (2009) and results are summarized in Table 1.