A small shift in VSH-gene frequency instead of rapid parallel evolution in bees. A comment on Oddie et al. 2018
Arista Bee Research Foundation, Boxmeer, The Netherlands
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Evolutionary Studies, Population Biology
- Keywords
- Varroa, resistance, honey bees, Varroa sensitive hygiene, recapping behaviour
- Copyright
- © 2019 van Alphen et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. A small shift in VSH-gene frequency instead of rapid parallel evolution in bees. A comment on Oddie et al. 2018. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27938v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27938v1
Abstract
We refute a recent claim that parallel evolution in four European populations of honeybees has resulted in a not previously reported behavioural defence mechanism of the bees against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, i.e. the ability of uncapping/recapping to reduce mite reproductive success. There are no data to support this claim, while there is a more plausible alternative interpretation of the reduced mite reproduction, i.e. reduction of mites through Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. We provide evidence why the former mechanism cannot explain resistance against Varroa in honeybees and the latter is instrumental in reducing Varroa populations.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints, submitted elsewhere for peer review.