MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA SEQUENCE DATA PROVIDES FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT THE HONEYBEES OF KANGAROO ISLAND, AUSTRALIA ARE OF HYBRID ORIGIN

Morphological, multivariate and allozyme data show that the honeybee p opulations of Kangaroo Island, Australia, are more similar to Apis mel lifera ligustica than A m mellifera. However, our sequence analysis of the ATPase 6, COIII, cytochrome b and ND2 mitochondrial genes shows a significant association, 100% according to bootstrap resampling, betw een the Kangaroo Island haplotype and A m mellifera. Therefore it is l ikely that the Kangaroo Island population was originally established f rom hybrids. We conclude that the ancestral populations of A m mellife ra contained both the 'mellifera' haplotypes reported here, with compl ementary fixations in Tasmania and on Kangaroo Island. Since A m melli fera mtDNA haplotypes are shared between Australian honeybees classifi ed as A m mellifera and A m ligustica, then the dichotomous nature of mtDNA lineages cannot be used to identity bees to subspecies in Austra lia.