Evaluation of morphometric characters of honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) populations in Nigeria
Author and article information
Abstract
Samples of workers of honeybee were collected from 41 colonies in nine localities in Nigeria and analysed using classical morphometry. Measurements of 35 morphological characters of body size, colour and pilosity were taken from 10 workers per colony and the data subjected to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and principal component analysis. Although ANOVA revealed a considerable variation of morphological characters between the sampled localities, principal component analysis indicated that this variation was not sufficient to group the colonies under investigation into geographically separable groups. Based on the agreement between the results of this study and those of previous studies, it is concluded that the honeybees of this area are morphometrically pure populations of sub-Saharan A. mellifera.
Cite this as
2016. Evaluation of morphometric characters of honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) populations in Nigeria. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1680v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1680v1Author comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
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Supplemental Information
Dataset of colony means of variables measured in the study
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The author declares that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Usman H Dukku conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The dataset containing means of the variables measured for each colony of bees is provided. However the raw data for individual bees are owned by a third-party who has not given their permission to publish as part of this manuscript.
Funding
The study was partially funded by the federal government of Nigeria through TETFUND and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
