Morphological Discrimination of Greek Honey Bee Populations Based on Geometric Morphometrics Analysis of Wing Shape

Abstract

Honey bees collected from 32 different localities in Greece were studied based on the geometric morphometrics approach using the coordinates of 19 landmarks located at wing vein intersections. Procrustes analysis, principal component analysis, and Canonical variate analysis (CVA) detected population variability among the studied samples. According to the Principal component analysis (PCA ) of pooled data from each locality, the most differentiated populations were the populations from the Aegean island localities Astypalaia, Chios, and Kythira. However, the populations with the most distant according to the canonical variate analysis performed on all measurements were the populations from Heraklion and Chania (both from Crete island). These results can be used as a starting point for the use of geometric morphometrics in the discrimination of honey bee populations in Greece and the establishment of conservation areas for local honey bee populations.