New haplotypes of Apis cerana in Indonesia: identification from mitochondrial and major royal jelly protein 2 genes

Abstract

Apis cerana is widely adapted to vast areas that stretch from Russia to Sundaland (Indonesia) through Palawan in the Philippines. By using mitochondrial DNA of the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COX1) gene, the cytochrome oxidase subunit 2 (COX2) gene, and the COX1-COX2 intergenic regions (IGS), as well as the nuclear major royal jelly protein 2 (mrjp2) gene, we aimed to explore the number of new haplotypes of A. cerana in Indonesia and the genetic variations of A. cerana in Indonesia, particularly between Sundaland A. cerana with the Moluccas and West Papua. These studies found three main findings; the first is the 11 A. cerana new haplotypes in total for the COX1, COX2, IGS, and mrjp2 gene sequences. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree agreed with the haplotype cluster. Apis cerana in West Papua and the Moluccas clustered in the same clade with the Sundaland A. cerana from Java, Banten, and Belitung, that suggests common origin of these bees. The third finding is genetic distances of COX1 gene between A. cerana in Java and those from West, East, South Kalimantan, Sabah, and Sarawak were approximately 4% which is similar to genetic distance between Indonesian A. cerana (A. cerana javana) and East Asia (A. cerana cerana and A. cerana japonica). The genetic distance also proved the separation of the Indonesian A. cerana lineage with the Indo-Malayan lineage (Sabah, Sarawak, and Kalimantan) from previous studies. This result gives rise to the possibility of the emerging new subspecies of A. cerana in Kalimantan.