Relações filogenéticas de abelhas indígenas sem ferrão do táxon Melipona Illiger, 1806 (Apidae: Meliponina) baseadas em seqüências parciais da região its1 do DNA ribossômico nuclear

Abstract

The present work was carried out from April 2006 to March 2008, in the departments of Biology and Animal Science in the Universidade Federal do Ceará. The aim of this research was to investigate, through molecular data, the phylogenetic relationships among some Brazilian stingless bee species belonging to the taxon Melipona Illiger, 1806. It was attempted to obtain information that could facilitate a taxonomic revision of this bee group in the future and to generate information useful to the development of rational rearing adequate to the distinct species of this taxon, contributing to a better commercial exploitation and conservation of these bee species. Bee samples were collected in various states of the North, Northeast and Southeast regions of Brazil. Through the extraction, amplification and partial DNA sequencing of the ITS1 region of nuclear ribosomal DNA of those samples and the partial sequences of the ITS1 region of other bees of the same taxon searched in the GenBank, it was possible to observe the following parameters: multiple alignment, nucleotide composition, matrixes of genetic distances and phylogenetic reconstruction. Results showed that multiple alignment resulted produced a central intersection of only 141 bp long and the average of the genetic distance among all the studied sequences of the taxon Melipona was of 7,6%. The phylogenetic trees built using algorithms based on the methods of the Neighbor-Joining (NJ), Maximum Parsimony (MP) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) for the partial sequences showed essentially the same topology, which was clearly distinct in three great clados: Clado 1 - contained the sequences of M. subnitida, M. quadrifasciata and M. mandacaia (all belonging to the subgenus Melipona); Clado 2 - included the sequences of M. quinquefasciata and M. fasciculata (both belonging to the subgenus Melikerria); and Clado 3 – represented in this work by the sequences of M. mondury, M. flavolineata and M. scutellaris (all belonging to the subgenus Michmelia). The three phylogenetic trees were capable to recover the monophyly of the genus Melipona as well as of the three clados, that appeared as monophyletic groups.