Insights into population structure and conservation status of North African honey bees
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The population structure of North African A. mellifera subspecies has been overlooked. Here, WG generated from drones were analyzed to assess population structure and the conservation status of three A-lineage subspecies: A. m. lamarckii (Egypt, 68 samples), A. m. intermissa (Algeria, 69 samples), and A. m. sahariensis (Algeria, 68 samples; Morocco, 26 samples). Population structure was assessed by SNMF and PCA. For A. m. lamarckii, variable C-lineage introgression was detected (median q-valueC-lineage=0.068; IQR=0.074) and PCA showed a well-grouped cluster slightly shifted towards C-lineage. Moroccan samples showed a highly compact group close to, but distinct from, the Algerian samples, and without signals of C-lineage introgression. In Algeria, only 28 A. m. sahariensis samples showed high purity values for this subspecies, and the remaining 48 samples showed variable introgression from A. m. intermissa (q-valueintermissa=0.127; 0.021). A more concerning scenario was found for A. m. intermissa, in which only 17 samples were classified as pure A. m. intermissa, 21 samples showed variable A. m. sahariensis introgression (q-valuesahariensis=0.125; 0.016), and the remaining 32 samples showed to be pure A. m. sahariensis. In the PCA analysis, a large portion of Algerian samples formed a cluster containing individuals of both subspecies. The remaining Algerian samples formed five well-defined isolated clusters: three containing A. m. sahariensis samples and two containing A. m. intermissa samples. SNMF runs at K=7 for the Algerian samples also recovered the existence of these high-purity isolated clusters. While most A. m. intermissa samples were located in the northern part of Algeria, some were located farther south. For A. m. sahariensis, a large portion of the samples were located close to the Mediterranean coast. These results suggest that, in addition to the C-lineage introgression (especially in A. m. lamarckii), the geographical delimitation originally described by Ruttner does not exist anymore in North Africa.
