title: Genetic structure of drone congregation areas of Africanized honeybees in southern Brazil.
abstract: As yet, certain aspects of the Africanization process are not well understood, for example, the reproductive behavior of African and European honeybees and how the first Africanized swarms were formed and spread. Drone congregation areas (DCAs) are the ideal place to study honeybee reproduction under natural conditions since hundreds of drones from various colonies gather together in the same geographical area for mating. In the present study, we assessed the genetic structure of seven drone congregations and four commercial European-derived and Africanized apiaries in southern Brazil, employing seven microsatellite loci for this purpose. We also estimated the number of mother-colonies that drones of a specific DCA originated from. Pairwise comparison failed to reveal any population sub-structuring among the DCAs, thus indicating low mutual genetic differentiation. We also observed high genetic similarity between colonies of commercial apiaries and DCAs, besides a slight contribution from a European-derived apiary to a DCA formed nearby. Africanized DCAs seem to have a somewhat different genetic structure when compared to the European.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Genética e Evolução, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, SP Brazil.
authors.forename: Thais
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Collet
authors.forename: Alexandre Santos
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Cristino
authors.forename: Carlos Fernando Prada
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Quiroga
authors.forename: Ademilson Espencer Egea
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Soares
authors.forename: Marco Antônio
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Del Lama