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Syrian bees actually of the "A" lineage not "O"

954 Views 6 Replies 1 Participant Last post by  HaplozygousNut
I am reading this article about Syrian bees being of the African "A" lineage and not the Middle Eastern "O" lineage, or even being its own new lineage:
https://bmcgenet.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1471-2156-14-117
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Pictures of bees in northern Aleppo, Syria:
https://english.enabbaladi.net/arch...ekeepers-work-in-northern-aleppo-countryside/

I have a colony here in North Carolina that shows some similarities in looks to the bees in northern Aleppo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G64aqUd6FMk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDB-lLe9HY
The bees in the photo from northern Aleppo, Syria are probably Anatolian or Anatolian hybrid instead of Syrian bees. Syrian bees are only found farther south than that.

Syrian bee photos in Jordan:

Another photo of light bees with dark tipped abdomens from Jordan:

Aggressive light colony's after swarm here in North Carolina. Syrian genetics? (set the youtube video at higher Resolution to see better the light colored bees with dark tipped abodemns):
Apis mellifera yemenitica ("Y" lineage) are similar genetically to A. m. lamarkii (Egyptian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage) and A. m. syriaca (Syrian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage):

Taxonomic tree of honeybee subspecies:

It would be cool if they test Cyprian bee (Apis mellifera cypria) to see if they are "O" lineage or not, unless they already done that.
A new subspecies of honeybee was found from the Kufra Oasis in Libya. They are near the Egyptian bee in range, so they could to be related.
Apis mellifera yemenitica ("Y" lineage) are similar genetically to A. m. lamarkii (Egyptian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage) and A. m. syriaca (Syrian bee, "A" or "Z" lineage):

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Reading online I am confused about which bee lineages are valid lineages:
Are entomologists studying bees from hybridization zones causing confusion?

Quote:
"Honey bee subspecies are assigned to these linages using morphometry and genetic methods; but variations of the results were observed between the two approaches. For Example, the Egyptian honey bees, A. m. lamarckii, in A lineage based on morphometry (Ruttner, 1988) but in O lineage based on mtDNA (Arias and Sheppard, 1996). Also, the Yemeni honey bees, A. m. jemenitica, in A lineage according to morphometry (Ruttner, 1988) and in Y lineage based on mtDNA (Coulibaly et al., 2019). Indeed, transition zones were detected between some subspecies (Kandemir et al., 2006a, Dukku, 2016, Alburaki et al., 2011)."
The bees in the photo from northern Aleppo, Syria are probably Anatolian or Anatolian hybrid instead of Syrian bees. Syrian bees are only found farther south than that.

Syrian bee photos in Jordan:

Another photo of light bees with dark tipped abdomens from Jordan:

Aggressive light colony's after swarm here in North Carolina. Syrian genetics? (set the youtube video at higher Resolution to see better the light colored bees with dark tipped abodemns):
There are very light colored bees in Iraq, too. That is where Persian bees (Apis mellifera meda) are said to be.
(See the light bees at 0:31. A. m. meda?)

A. m. meda and A. m. anatoliaca are now in the sublineage "Z" of the "A" lineage, the same as the Syrian bee:
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