Morphometric Characteristics And Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphisms Of Honeybee (Apis Mellifera And Apis Cerana) In The Northwestern Of China

81 Apis mellifera honeybee colonies from Yili River Valley of Xinjiang province of China and 85 Apis cerana honeybee coloies from northeast of Gansu and south of Ningxia were identified using both morphological morphometric analysis and mitochondrial DNA tRNAleu- COâ…¡gene. 41 morphological characters were analysized for each individual bee, and in total 15 honeybee workers were employed for each sample. Variance analysis, principal component analysis, discriminant analysis and cluster analysis were performed using SAS 6.12. The mitochondrial DNA tRNAleu- COâ…¡gene were amplified by primer pair E2/H2, both Draâ… disgested and sequencing were performed.Morphological characters multivariate statistical analysis of Apis mellifera from Xinjiang revealed two distinct morphoclusters of bee: (1) B colony was cluster with the Apis mellifera mellifera, and A colony cluster with the newly discovered subspecies Apis mellifera pomonella.Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis of Apis mellifera from Xinjiang were revealed 6 different haplotypes were found in the tRNAleu- COâ…¡gene. This 6 haplotypes could cluster the 3 large type, C type clusted like the Apis mellifera anatolica, include the 4 haplotypes, and have a little gene mutation. D type clusted with the Apis mellifera ligustica, the E type culsted like the Apis mellifera mellifera, only have one sample.Synthesized the conclusion of above, we could know the A colony and D type are the same Apis mellifera honeybee samples. The B colony and D type / E type have the same Apis mellifera honeybee samples.Morphological characters multivariate statistical analysis of Apis cerana from the northeast of Gsnsu and south of Ningxia, could revealed two distanct morphoclusters of bee, F colony was cluster all honeybee come from the plant and low hill region of northeast of Gansu, H colony was cluster from the Liupanshan Mountain in the south of Ningxia. This two place have different climate and geographical type.The PCR products of Apis cerana were digested with Draâ… and three restricton pattens were revealed.Through sequenced and 11 different haplotypes were found in the non-coding region between tRNAleu and COâ…¡.The sequence of the haplotypes were 96-97bp long.The sequences found in the study were compared with those which hand been described before.The alignment results and the phylogenetic trees showed that the honeybee Apis cerana adjacent countries had similar mtDNA sequences and they all falled into the Asian mainland group.