Three QTL in the honey bee Apis mellifera L. suppress reproduction of the parasitic mite Varroa destructor
Open Access
- 1 November 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Ecology and Evolution
- Vol. 1 (4), 451-458
- https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.17
Abstract
Varroa destructor is a highly virulent ectoparasitic mite of the honey bee Apis mellifera and a major cause of colony losses for global apiculture. Typically, chemical treatment is essential to control the parasite population in the honey bee colony. Nevertheless a few honey bee populations survive mite infestation without any treatment. We used one such Varroa mite tolerant honey bee lineage from the island of Gotland, Sweden, to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling reduced mite reproduction. We crossed a queen from this tolerant population with drones from susceptible colonies to rear hybrid queens. Two hybrid queens were used to produce a mapping population of haploid drones. We discriminated drone pupae with and without mite reproduction, and screened the genome for potential QTL using a total of 216 heterozygous microsatellite markers in a bulk segregant analysis. Subsequently, we fine mapped three candidate target regions on chromosomes 4, 7, and 9. Although the individual effect of these three QTL was found to be relatively small, the set of all three had significant impact on suppression of V. destructor reproduction by epistasis. Although it is in principle possible to use these loci for marker-assisted selection, the strong epistatic effects between the three loci complicate selective breeding programs with the Gotland Varroa tolerant honey bee stock.This publication has 116 references indexed in Scilit:
- Nicotianamine synthase overexpression positively modulates iron homeostasis-related genes in high iron riceFrontiers in Plant Science, 2013
- Iron biofortification in rice by the introduction of multiple genes involved in iron nutritionScientific Reports, 2012
- OsYSL16 plays a role in the allocation of ironPlant Molecular Biology, 2012
- The rice mitochondrial iron transporter is essential for plant growthNature Communications, 2011
- OsYSL18 is a rice iron(III)–deoxymugineic acid transporter specifically expressed in reproductive organs and phloem of lamina jointsPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,2009
- Facing the challenges of Cu, Fe and Zn homeostasis in plantsNature Chemical Biology, 2009
- FOXO3A genotype is strongly associated with human longevityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Varroosis – the Ongoing Crisis in Bee KeepingJournal für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit, 2008
- Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis melliferaNature, 2006
- A scientific note on Varroa destructor resistance to coumaphos in the United StatesApidologie, 2004