The mitochondrial genome of Apis mellifera siciliana

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:

• Mitogenome
• Apis mellifera siciliana
• African subspecies
• phylogenetic relationship

Acknowledgments

Carlo Amodeo provided the A. m. siciliana sample. Data analyses were performed using computational resources at the Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança.

Ethical approval

This study does not require ethical approval, since the directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament and of the council of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes does not include invertebrates like honey bees.

Authors’ contributions

M.A.P., D.H., and J.R. conceived the ideas and designed the methodology. C.C. acquired the data. D.H. performed most of the analyses with the assistance of J. R. D.H., M.A.P., C.C., and J.R. wrote the manuscript. All the authors critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Data availability statement

The genome sequence data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ under the accession no. MZ981768. The associated BioProject, SRA, and BioSample numbers are PRJNA799756, SRP356349, and SAMN25208295, respectively.

Additional information

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).