Soro A, Quezada-Euán J J G, Theodorou P, Moritz R F A, Paxton R J (2017) The population genetics of two orchid bees suggests high dispersal, low diploid male production and only an effect of island isolation in lowering genetic diversity. Conservation Genetics 18(3): 607-619. DOI:10.1007/s10592-016-0912-8

Abstract

  Orchid bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Euglossini) are important pollinators of many plant families in Neotropical forests, habitats that have become increasingly degraded and fragmented by agricultural practices. To understand the extent to which loss of natural habitat and isolation has affected the genetic diversity and diploid male production (DMP) of two orchid bee species,Euglossa dilemma and Euglossa viridissima, we collected and genotyped 1686 males at five microsatellite loci and tested for differences in allelic richness, heterozygosity and DMP across three different types of land use (natural, agricultural and urban) and between mainland and island populations in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. We also investigated the impact of land use and geographic isolation on gene flow. Euglossa dilemma and E. viridissima seemed to be particularly resilient to loss of natural habitat; in locations with human impact, we did not find reduced genetic diversity, and populations generally showed very little population genetic structure. Only on islands did E. dilemma show significantly reduced genetic diversity. Even after accounting for putative null alleles, DMP was very low (0.2–1.3%) across all sampling sites, including on islands. We therefore suggest that DMP is an insensitive measure of inbreeding and population decline in our two study species.

 

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Landaverde-González P; Moo-Valle H; Murray T E; Paxton R J; Quezada-Euán J J G; Husemann M (2017) Sympatric lineage divergence in cryptic Neotropical sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae: Lasioglossum). Organisms Diversity & Evolution  17 (1): 251-265

Abstract
 Given ongoing biodiversity decline, an important concern is that a large fraction of species diversity is not yet documented. Correct delimitation of species remains a challenge, especially for small and morphologically uniform groups such as sweat bees (Halictidae). Here, we applied an integrative taxonomic approach to study diversity within the Neotropical sweat bee subgenus Dialictus (genus Lasioglossum). We used four statistical methods to delimit species based on cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene sequences: Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), two variants of the General Mixed Yule Coalescent (single-threshold (stGMYC) and Bayesian (bGMYC)) and the Refined Single Linkage analysis (RESL). We detected eight principal molecular operational taxonomic units (mOTUs). Subsequently, these lineages were evaluated using ten nuclear microsatellite loci and morphological and ecological analyses. Most mOTUs could be differentiated using microsatellites and morphology (82 % identified correctly), further supporting the status of mOTUs as independent biological units. For the two most widespread mOTUs, we analysed intra-lineage geographic variation using microsatellites but did not detect additional substructuring. We further tested if the lineages showed predictable patterns of co-occurrence and habitat preferences. While we did not find any evidence of preferential association or disassociation between taxa, we detected a slight positive effect of high crop cover favouring the abundance of some lineages. We show that integrated approaches using statistical analysis of DNA barcodes jointly with additional data can provide robust and objective means of delimiting species in morphologically difficult groups.

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