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| Titel |
Migrations of European honey bee lineages into Africa, Asia, and North America during the Oligocene and Miocene |
| VerfasserIn |
Ulrich Kotthoff, Torsten Wappler, Michael Engel |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250075457
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Today honey bees, principally the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, represent a multi-billion
dollar agricultural industry. Through the efforts of humans they have become established
well outside of their modern native ranges, having been introduced multiple times
into the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and many areas of
Oceania.
The native, i.e., non-human influenced, distribution and migration of honey bee species
and populations has been a matter of serious and continued debate. Apicultural dogma
informs us that the center of origin of honey bees (genus Apis) resides in Asia, with
subsequent migration and diversification into Europe and Asia. Recent population
genetic studies of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, slightly modified this
received wisdom by suggesting that this species originated in Africa and subsequently
reinvaded Eurasia. Research into the historical biogeography of honey bees has
ignored entirely the abundant fossil evidence distributed through a variety of Late
Paleogene (Oligocene) and Early Neogene (Miocene) deposits, a diversity which is
predominantly European in origin, particularly among the most basal species of the
genus.
We have examined the morphological disparity and affinities of the full living and fossil
diversity of honey bees ranging from their earliest origins to the present day. This analysis
indicates that honey bees exhibited a greater morphological disparity during the Oligocene
and Miocene epochs, a time when the principal lineages were established, and that Apis
apparently originated in Europe, spreading from there into Asia, Africa, and North
America, with subsequent diversification in the former two regions and extinction in the
latter. During the human migrations and colonization honey bees were once again
introduced multiple times into the Americas, as well as into Australia and Asia. |
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