Exploring genomic signatures of modern apiculture in the western honeybee (Apis mellifera)

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Domestication is an adaptive evolutionary process in which one species, the domesticator, manipulates the environment of a partner species, the domesticate, to retrieve a service from the latter, and the domesticate evolves towards higher fitness and higher rates of service provision in the manipulated environment. The western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is highly valued as a managed pollinator, honey producer, and model organism for neurobiology, sociobiology, and genetics. However, besides being managed in beekeeping hives since millennia, wild colonies still make up a large fraction of the world’s honeybee population. Since managed honeybees face a higher degree of exposure to the (natural) environment than other livestock species and there is limited control of gene flow between managed and wild populations, it is generally unclear whether, or to which degree, managed honeybees are under domestication. The objective of this project is to bring together paired sampled of wild and managed honeybee populations from multiple regions around the world, and obtain genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information of each population using sequencing of pools of individuals (Pool-seq). The comparison of genomic data will allow us to infer whether selection pressures under modern beekeeping management and under wild conditions differ sufficiently to produce functional (i.e., adaptive) genetic differences between managed and wild honeybee populations. The results will provide insights into whether modern apiculture can generally be regarded as a true domestication process and whether beekeeping is likely to affect the fitness of honeybees under natural conditions. This information is relevant for apiculture, wild pollinator conservation, and researchers using honeybees as a model organism.