The mitochondrial genome of Apis mellifera siciliana

Dora Henriques; Cecília Costa; José Rufino; Maria Alice Pinto

doi:10.1080/23802359.2022.2073844

The mitochondrial genome of Apis mellifera siciliana

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2022 May 10;7(5):828-830. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2022.2073844. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Dora Henriques¹, Cecília Costa², José Rufino³, Maria Alice Pinto¹

Affiliations

¹ Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.
² Centro di Ricerca Agricoltura e Ambiente (CREA-AA), Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria, Bologna, Italy.
³ Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.

Abstract

We assembled the mitogenome of Apis mellifera siciliana, which was previously identified as African by the tRNA-leu-cox2 intergenic region. The mitogenome is 16,590 bp long. The gene content and organization are identical to other A. mellifera mitogenomes, containing 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and 2 ribosomal RNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed a close mitochondrial relationship between A. m. siciliana and other African subspecies such as Apis mellifera sahariensis, Apis mellifera intermissa, and Apis mellifera ruttneri.

Keywords: African subspecies; Apis mellifera siciliana; Mitogenome; phylogenetic relationship.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by MEDIBEES - Monitoring the Mediterranean Honey Bee Subspecies and their Resilience to Climate Change for the Improvement of Sustainable Agro-Ecosystems; BEEHAPPY ([POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029871]; FCT and COMPETE/QREN/EU). MEDIBEES is part of the PRIMA program supported by the European Union. Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) provided financial support by national funds (FCT/MCTES) to CIMO [UIDB/00690/2020]. Dora Henriques is supported by the project BEEHAPPY ([POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029871]; FCT and COMPETE/QREN/EU).