Geometric morphometric analysis of giant honeybee (Apis dorsata Fabricius, 1793) populations in Thailand

Geometric morphometry was used to characterize 73 Apis dorsata colonies collected from 31 different localities in five major geographic regions of mainland Thailand. We measured 19 easily identified landmarks from the digitized images of the right forewing of 10 worker bees from each colony (730 bees in total); thus, avoiding the confounding variation from haploid or diploid males. After plotting the factor scores, A. dorsata from (mainland) Thailand were found to belong to a single group, which was further supported by a hierarchical cluster analysis-generated dendrogram. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA, α = 0.05) demonstrated no significant differences among the five geographic groups of A. dorsata in Thailand, producing a low degree of accuracy (31.2%) in the identification of the geographic region from which any individual bee originated. Additionally, when the bee samples were classified into two groups, those north and south of the Isthmus of Kra were not significantly different (MANOVA, α = 0.05), and a low rate of correct classification in a cross-validation test (65% correct) was found. Therefore, this geometric morphometric based analysis of worker bee wing venation pattern suggests that A. dorsata populations in mainland Thailand are panmictic.

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► Geometric morphometry was used to characterize Apis dorsata colonies from Thailand.
► Nineteen landmarks of the right forewing from each of 10 worker bees were measured.
► Due to the factor scores and MANOVA, A. dorsata was found to belong to a single group.
► Therefore, A. dorsata populations in mainland Thailand are panmictic.