Haplotypes of the tRNAleu-COII mtDNA Region in Russian Apis mellifera Populations

SIMPLE SUMMARY: One of the most discussed issues in beekeeping is the introduction and hybridization of the honey bee subspecies Apis mellifera mellifera (dark forest bee). In most of Russia, the dark forest bee is a native subspecies. However, due to hybridization with introduced subspecies, a small number of purebred populations of the dark forest bee remained. In this study, using the mitochondrial marker tRNAleu-COII, we established the maternal descent of honey bees from 19 regions of Russia. As a result, it was found that 198 of the studied colonies belong to the M evolutionary lineage and 71—to the C lineage. We have found two different population groups of the dark forest bee in Russia—one of them belongs to the haplogroup M17, the other to M4’. Haplogroup M4′ dominated in the European A. m. mellifera and A. m. iberiensis populations. Whereas haplogroup M17 was rare in European populations of the dark forest bee. ABSTRACT: Analysis of the mtDNA tRNAleu-COII locus is a widely used tool to establish belonging to a particular evolutionary lineage of Apis mellifera L. (lineages A, M, C, O, and Y). In Russia, most of the area was once inhabited by Apis mellifera mellifera from the M evolutionary lineage, but the introduction of bee subspecies from the southern regions of Russia (A. m. caucasica, A. m. carnica) and from abroad (A. m. carnica, A. m. ligustica) led to fragmentation of their native range. In this study, the results of assessing the haplotype number for the tRNAleu-COII locus of mtDNA in Russian Apis mellifera populations were presented. We analyzed 269 colonies from 19 regions of Russia. As a result, two evolutionary lineages were identified: the East European lineage C (26.4%) and the Northwestern European lineage M (73.6%). A total of 29 haplotypes were identified, 8 of them were already reported, and 21 were found to be novel. From the C lineage, haplotypes C1, C2, C2c, C2j, and C3 were predominant. All M lineage samples from Russia belong to the M17 and M4’ haplogroups but have only minor variations in the form of nucleotide substitutions. An analysis of publications devoted to the tRNAleu-COII locus haplotypes, as well as an analysis of the available tRNAleu-COII sequences in GenBank, showed that there is still a problem with the haplotype nomenclature.