Mitochondrial DNA sequence data provides further evidence that the honeybees of Kangaroo Island, Australia are of hybrid origin

Abstract - Morphological, multivariate and allozyme data show that the honeybee populations of Kangaroo Island, Australia, are more similar to Apis mellifera ligustica than A m mellifera. However, our sequence analysis of the ATPase 6, COIII, cytochrome b and ND2 mitochondrial genes shows a significant association, 100% according to bootstrap resampling, between the Kangaroo Island haplotype and A m mellifera. Therefore it is likely that the Kangaroo Island population was originally established from hybrids. We conclude that the ancestral populations of A m mellifera contained both the 'mellifera' haplotypes reported here, with complementary fixations in Tasmania and on Kangaroo Island. Since A m mellifera mtDNA haplotypes are shared between Australian honeybees classified as A m mellifera and A m ligustica, then the dichotomous nature of mtDNA lineages cannot be used to identify bees to subspecies in Australia.