Wing morphometrics reveals the migration patterns of Africanized honey bees in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Climatic differences can directly affect the population structure of organisms. The Northeastern Brazilian covers an area of about 1.5 million square kilometres, in which the semi-arid part corresponds to approximately 60%. It is probably the most vulnerable region to climatic variations in Brazil. Here, we investigated the variability of Africanized honey bees in different localities from Northeast Brazil during the dry season and the influence of drought periods in morphological variation among populations. Analyses were carried out with data collected by traditional and geometric morphometrics of bees sampled during the dry season and showed a subtle morphological variation in agreement to the climatic pattern. Furthermore, once we added samples collected during the rainy season, we observed a change in its pattern, with a very different result from the same population sampled during drought periods. The geometric morphometrics results emphasized that samples collected during the rainy season in Mossoró would be more similar to bees from humid coastal areas. These results probably reflect the probable dispersion pattern of these bees between humid coastal and semi-arid areas.