honey bees are a product of the old world or the new world in europe.
are honey bees a product of the old world or the new world?
europe
this study produced an interesting phylogeny that revealed an initial old world divergence around 112.3 mya, divergence and radiance of new world "dorstenia" at 67.2 and 30.3 mya respectively, and an old world group nested within the new world that radiated around 13.6 mya. the results of this phylogeny do not determine if vicariance or seed dispersal is the cause behind the old and new world populations of "dorstenia"; however, it does pose several hypotheses regarding how the new world population came about as well as how three old world "dorstenia" species are nested in the new world clade of the phylogeny. due to the small endosperm that is typical of "dorstenia" seeds, it is unlikely that seed dispersal by animals is the reason for the new world and reemerged old world species. however, it is possible that the new world population emerged by transport over the beringia, established populations all throughout the north and south americas, and when climate conditions changed and north america was no longer tropical or subtropical that the north american population died out, leaving only the new world population seen today in south america. this idea also allows for the old world species nested within the new world by "dorstenia" populations established in america returning to africa by beringia. for this hypothesis to receive more credence, fossil "dorstenia" plants in north america would be needed.
dorstenia
this phorid fly is native to north america, attacking bumble bees and paper wasps. the infection of european honey bees in north america by "a. borealis" is a recent development that was first discovered by dr. john hafernik, who collected some dead specimens near a light source at san francisco state university's campus. these were placed in a vial and forgotten. about a week later larvae emerged from the dead bees. information is insufficient to explain why the parasitic fly jumped to its new host, but concern exists that this new host provides an opportunity for the fly to thrive and further threaten the decreasing honey bee population. to identify this fly, dna barcoding was used, demonstrating that the phorids that emerged from "apis" and "bombus" had no more than 0.2% (1 bp) divergence among samples. what variation was found was from among those phorids reared from honey bees, rather than between flies reared from honey bees versus bumble bees. other analyses gave similar results, including morphological criteria, sequencing of 18s rrna genes, and cross-infection of honey bees using phorids that had emerged from both honeybees and bumblebees, thus confirming that the phorids attacking honey bees are the same species as those attacking bumble bees.
apocephalus borealis