Apis mellifera capensis is unique among honeybees in that unmated workers can produce pseudo-clonal female offspring via thelytokous parthenogenesis. Workers use this ability to compete among themselves and with their queen to be the mother of new queens. Males could therefore enhance their reproductive success by imprinting genes that enhance fertility in their daughter workers. This possibili...

Polymerase chain reaction(PCR)-ampliÞedmitochondrialDNA(mtDNA)assayshave been used in studies of the Africanization process in neotropical feral and managed honey bee populations. The approach has been adopted, in conjunction with morphometric analysis, to identify Africanized bees for regulatory purposes in the United States such as in California. In this study, 211 Old World colonies, represe...

A population ecological hostparasite model is used to evaluate the potential impact of clonal parasitic laying workers of the Cape honeybee, Apis mellifera capensis on populations of Apis mellifera scutellata host colonies in apiaries and in the wild. The model includes three basic life history parameters: reproductive rate of the host colonies, transmission efficiency of the parasite and the d...

Thirty seven new Neotropical species of the phorid genus Neopleurophora are described— N. acrensis, sp. nov., N. acrochaetopyga,sp. nov., N. atlantica, sp. nov., N. balbii, sp. nov., N. boliviana, sp. nov., N. brachypyga, sp. nov., N.brachytarsus, sp. nov., N. browni, sp. nov., N. carcharopyga, sp. nov., N. cauca, sp. nov., N. ceratopyga, sp. nov., N. chocoensis, sp. nov., N. colobopyga, sp. no...

A cDNA clone coding for the trypsin inhibitor MsTI from snail medic (Medicago scutellata L.) was isolated by RT-PCR using poly(A)+ mRNA purified from immature seeds. A partial cDNA fragment was produced using degenerated oligonucleotides designed from the available MsTI amino acid sequence. The full-length cDNA was obtained by RACE-PCR experiments. A putative signal peptide for subcellular loca...

We characterized Apis mellifera in both native and introduced ranges using 1136 single-nucleotide polymorphisms genotyped in 341 individuals. Our results indicate that A. mellifera originated in Africa and expanded into Eurasia at least twice, resulting in populations in eastern and western Europe that are geographically close but genetically distant. A third expansion in the New World has invo...