Caracterización molecular de abejas de la tribu Meliponini de las principales provincias meliponicultoras de Ecuador

In countries where there is great biological diversity, species identification and characterization processes are necessary. DNA barcodes constitute a simple identification technique that allows the discovery of cryptic taxa, through the use of reference libraries. The bees of the Meliponini tribe are stingless honey bees that have a great diversity of species. In Ecuador, these bees play an important role due to the medicinal uses that the inhabitants have given to the honey from these species. However, identification studies in the country are scarce, so the main producing species are unknown. Therefore, in this study it was proposed to characterize by means of molecular methods the species of the Meliponini tribe of the main meliponiculture provinces of Ecuador. For this, individuals of 64 bee stings without stings from the provinces of El Oro, Loja, Zamora Chinchipe, Pastaza, Los Ríos and Orellana were analyzed, through the sequencing of the IOC (cytochrome c oxidase I) gene and comparison with the bases of GenBank and BOLD data. Collaboration was also carried out with the expert taxonomist David W. Roubik for the taxonomic identification of these species. The results of the identification showed that the largest number of species belong to the genus Melipona. In the provinces of Loja and El Oro, the genus that prevailed was Melipona and Scaptotrigona, and in the other provinces of the country, species belonging to the genera Cephalotrigona, Trigona, Tetragonisca, Partamona, Paratrigona and Oxytrigona were identified. However, in some cases it was not possible to elucidate at the species level the individuals, mainly of the Melipona genus, despite having the complete sequence of the IOC gene, because they had a near intraspecific and interspecific variability value. In addition, the results showed that the province of Loja presented the least intraspecific variability. In conclusion, 18 species of stingless bees belonging to 9 genera were identified, of which the largest number of individuals corresponds to the genus Melipona and Scaptotrigona in the main meliponiculture provinces of Ecuador.

• Egile nagusia: Loján Cueva, Pamela Leticia (author)
• Formatua: bachelorThesis
• Hizkuntza: spa
• Argitaratua: 2019
• Gaiak: BIOLOGÍA MOLECULAR; GENÉTICA MOLECULAR; GENÉTICA ECOLÓGICA; MELIPONINI
• Sarrera elektronikoa: http://dspace.udla.edu.ec/handle/33000/11810